The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by the work. In 1867, his wife had to drag him away from the panel lest its grip on him induce an epileptic fit. Dostoevsky saw in Holbein an impulse similar to one of his own main literary preoccupations: the pious desire to confront Christian faith with everything that negated it, in this case the laws of nature and the stark reality of death. In his 1869 novel "The Idiot", the character Prince Myshkin, having viewed a copy of the painting in the home of Rogozhin, declares that it has the power to make the viewer lose his faith. The
Demons (Dostoevsky novel) in the ideas of Petr Tkachev. Tkachev argued that the only biologically possible 'equality' for human beings was "an organic, physiological equality conditioned by the same education and common living conditions" and he saw this as the supreme goal of all historical and social progress. Contemporary events in Russia and the terroristic actions of the Paris Commune had convinced Dostoevsky that the world was entering an apocalyptic age. Kjertsaa claims that Dostoevsky did not regard "Revelation" as "merely a consolatory epistle to first century Christians during the persecution they suffered", but as a "prophecy being fulfilled in his own time".