What It Is
The verse from the Gospel of John that serves as the novel's epigraph, before the preface "From the author", and that the book later places in the hands of Elder Zosima: the grain of wheat that, if it does not fall into the earth and die, remains alone, and that, if it dies, bears much fruit. It is not an object the novel shows; it is a figure it cites twice and leaves at work around it: the idea that nothing bears fruit without first losing itself. Zosima says it right after speaking of the suffering awaiting one of the Karamazovs, and shows it, in another scene, to a man who must decide between keeping silent about a crime and declaring it. The novel does not explain the verse, it only places it at the threshold and at two moments of decision.
Where It Appears
The epigraph comes before any chapter and has no scene. In chapter I of Book VI, on the last afternoon, Zosima sends Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov to look for Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, and says why.
Поспеши найти, завтра опять ступай и поспеши, всё оставь и поспеши. Может, еще успеешь что-либо ужасное предупредить. Я вчера великому будущему страданию его поклонился., Hurry and find him, tomorrow go again and hurry, leave everything and hurry. Perhaps you will still have time to prevent something terrible. Yesterday I bowed down before his great future suffering.
Right after, with no declared application, he quotes the verse and tells the disciple to keep it.
Если пшеничное зерно, падши в землю, не умрет, то останется одно; а если умрет, то принесет много плода, if the grain of wheat, falling into the earth, does not die, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
In chapter II of Book VI, during the elder's life, the mysterious visitor, who fourteen years earlier stabbed a widow and let another man pay for it, wavers between declaring the crime and keeping silent. On a night when he demands a decision, Zosima, his voice gone, whispers that he should declare it, and opens the Gospel before him at that same verse. The man says there are books that fill one with horror, leaves, returns at midnight and, the next day, reads out the crime before the assembled town. On one of the earlier nights, he had told Zosima what he expected.
Знаю, что наступит рай для меня, тотчас же и наступит, как объявлю. Четырнадцать лет был во аде. Пострадать хочу. Приму страдание и жить начну., I know that paradise will come for me, it will come at once, as soon as I declare it. For fourteen years I was in hell. I want to suffer. I will accept the suffering and begin to live.
The verse does not return as a quotation after Book VI. The figure returns in scenes where someone accepts losing something in order to gain another thing he cannot see. In chapter IV of Book XI, in the jail, Mitya explains to Alyosha why he will go to Siberia without having killed his father.
За «дитё» и пойду. Потому что все за всех виноваты. За всех «дитё», потому что есть малые дети и большие дети. Все — «дитё». За всех и пойду, потому что надобно же кому-нибудь и за всех пойти. Я не убил отца, но мне надо пойти. Принимаю!, For "the child" I will go. Because everyone is guilty for everyone. For everyone, "the child", because there are small children and big children. Everyone is "the child". I will go for everyone, because someone must go for everyone. I did not kill my father, but I must go. I accept!
In chapter III of the Epilogue, beside the stone, after the dead boy has been put into the earth, Alyosha tells the boys what should remain with them.
Если много набрать таких воспоминаний с собою в жизнь, то спасен человек на всю жизнь, if one carries many such memories into life, a man is saved for his whole life.
What It Means
The grain of wheat names the logic that the novel sets beside the revolt of Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov, for whom senseless suffering refuses any harmony that includes it. Zosima's answer is not an argument: it is a form, the idea that a loss accepted can be the beginning of a life. The visitor proves it by declaring, and his paradise begins when he fulfills his duty. Mitya proves it in jail, by saying he accepts going. In neither case does the fruit come without cost: the visitor dies a week later and the town turns against Zosima, and Mitya still has to hear that the cross may be too heavy for him.
The verse promises fruit, and the book, honestly, shows the grain in the earth more than the ear. Two readings. In one, the fruit is in the final scenes: Mitya, who calls himself another man, the boys who swear to stay with Ilyusha's father, the visitor who dies serene, and the figure of the grain is fulfilled in whoever stays. In the other, the novel leaves the fruit in suspense on purpose: the Epilogue ends with Mitya ready to flee and Ivan in fever, and the grain falls without it being seen whether it sprouts. Zosima, who cites the verse without applying it, seems to know the difference, and his own body, which smells, is the first grain put to the test in chapter I of Book VII.
Relationships
- Default themes: Suffering, Guilt, Faith.
- Themes of the work: Suffering, Guilt, Faith.
- Characters: Elder Zosima, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov, Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov, Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov.
- Neighboring symbols: the earth watered with tears, the ground the grain falls into, and the noxious odor, Zosima's body put to the test.