A novel published in serial form
The Brothers Karamazov was the last novel of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, and it came out in serial form in the Russian Messenger, from early 1879 until November 1880. According to Joseph Frank's biography, the first installment appeared on February 1, 1879, in the midst of a wave of attacks against Tsar Alexander II. In October 1877 the author had suspended the Writer's Diary for two years, in order to devote himself to the literary work that was taking shape within him.
In October 1877 Dostoevsky announced the suspension of the Writer's Diary for two years, citing illness, in order to devote himself to what was already taking shape within him:
I hope to devote myself to the belles-lettres work that has been taking shape within me, imperceptibly and involuntarily, during the two years of publication of the Diary.
Frank also reports that Book V, «Pro and Contra», was written in Staraya Russa between May and July 1879, with letters to the editor explaining the intention behind each shipment.
Dostoevsky wrote Book 5, "Pro and Contra," in Staraya Russa between May and July 1879, and each shipment to the publisher Lyubimov came with a letter explaining its intention, something rare in his corpus. About the first half, he wrote that he wanted toportray the extreme blasphemy and the seed of the idea of destruction in our era in Russia [...] and, together with the blasphemy and the anarchy, their refutation, which I am now preparing in the last words of the dying elder Zosima, calling the convictions of Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov the "synthesis of contemporary Russian anarchism".
The novel ended at the end of 1880, and the final part was sent to the editor in November.
On November 7, 1880, Dostoevsky sent Lyubimov the final part of The Brothers Karamazov, after three years of work and two years of publication in installments:
Well, so the novel is finished [...] Allow me not to bid you farewell. After all, I intend to live and write for another twenty years.
The dead son and the visit to Optina
The hero bears the name of the author's dead son. In May 1878, the epilepsy inherited from his father killed little Alyosha, almost three years old, and Dostoevsky then visited the monastery of Optina, where the consolation he heard from Father Ambrose became a scene in the novel.
On April 30, 1878, Dostoevsky's son Alyosha, almost three years old, suffered his first epileptic convulsion, and on May 16 an attack lasting twelve hours and forty minutes killed him, the same disease inherited from the father. To recover, Dostoevsky traveled to the monastery of Optina Pustyn, where he met three times with the elder Father Ambrose.
The scene is that of the mother of the people who lost her son, almost three years old, also named Alexei, and to whom Zosima says not to console herself and to weep, because the boy is an angel of God who watches over her (chapter III of Book II).
И не утешайся, и не надо тебе утешаться, не утешайся и плачь, только каждый раз, когда плачешь, вспоминай неуклонно, что сыночек твой — есть единый от ангелов божиих, And do not console yourself, nor should you console yourself; do not console yourself, but weep, only remember each time you weep, without fail, that your little son is one of God's angels.
The whole novel as an answer to the Inquisitor
Frank records a note by Dostoevsky, written after the book was finished, in which the whole novel is the answer to the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, and not only Zosima's preaching in Book VI, as he had earlier suggested to the censor (according to Joseph Frank's biography). The most direct source of the Inquisitor's logic, according to Frank, is an anecdote that the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov heard from a Jesuit in Paris and told the novelist.
The most direct source for the logic of the Grand Inquisitor, according to Frank, is an anecdote that Solovyov himself heard from a French Jesuit in Paris and reported to Dostoevsky:
Of course, at this moment no one can believe most of the Christian dogma [...] But you will agree that civilized society cannot exist without a strong authority and a firmly organized hierarchy; only the Catholic Church has this authority [...] therefore every enlightened man [...] must be a Catholic.
The author's death
Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg on January 28, 1881, Julian calendar, less than three months after sending the final part of the novel, of a pulmonary hemorrhage, after opening the New Testament at random and asking his wife to read the first passage.
Dostoevsky died on January 28, 1881 (Julian calendar), at about half past eight in the evening, after a final hemorrhage followed by a coma of about two hours.
The funeral procession went along Nevsky Prospect to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.
The funeral procession of January 31, 1881 brought together 67 delegations from institutions and periodicals, with fifteen choirs, and took two hours to cross Nevsky Prospect, in St. Petersburg, to the Lavra.