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After word Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's last word on the subjects that haunted him. He did not plan it that way - in fact, the novel was to be the first of two exploring the life of his "hero," Alexei Karamazov. Unfortunately, Dostoevsky would never write this novel. Death came abruptly. In January of 1881, a conversation with his sister concerning the inheritance of some property upset him, and he began to hemorrhage from the throat. He recovered well enough to entertain his children with verses from a popular magazine. For two days he seemed well. But then, on the morning of January 28, his wife Anna woke up to find him wide-awake. When she asked what the matter was, he told her that he was going to die that day. She tried to convince him it was nonsense, but the great writer would script his final scene. He asked his wife to read to him from the Bible that he had received on the way to prison. She read the parable of the prodigal son. He summoned his children, bid them good-bye, spoke some tender words to his wife. That evening he hemorrhaged again, and lost consciousness. He died at 11:38 that night. The years that followed Dostoevsky's death would be traumatic for Russia. Tsar Alexander would be assassinated later in 1881. Various bloody uprisings would occur. Finally, in 1917, the revolution that Dostoevsky had both courted and feared would deliver Russia to Marxism, atheism, and other "isms' imported from the west. The spiritual and purely Russian salvation that Dostoevsky dreamed of for his nation would not be realized. Still, his novels and his life survive as testimonies to the belief that the human spirit might prevail over humankind's misbegotten theories and social constructs.
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