The novel The Brothers Karamazov is a novel of ideas and passions.  To Dostoevsky  they are interrelated.  Ideas are believed (or not) with passion. One of those ideas that is explored in the novel is love.

A curious aspect of the novel is how closely connected love and hate are.  Dostoevsky does not see them as opposites. They are really two sides of the same coin.  As Dmitri said about Katerina “I stared at her with a terrifying hatred that is only a hair’s breadth from the maddest most desperate love.” It is just like “ice burning my forehead like a flame.”  Dmitri asks his brother “Can you understand Alyosha that there are moments of ecstasy in which we could kill ourselves.”

Dmitri also tells Alyosha “Falling in love with someone doesn’t mean loving that person. It’s possible to fall in love and hate at the same time.”

Dmitri can passionately love 2 women at the same time. Katerina and Grushenko. Of course that makes things very difficult.

Often the loves resemble hate. Even the lovers sometimes fail to see the love. The love between Dmitri and Katerina are like that. “It was a hysterical twisted love made up of offended pride, a love that resembled revenge more than love.” Dostoevsky says, “They were like two enemies desperately in love.” Dmitri tells Katerina “I swear to you, I loved you while I hated you.”

Grushenka  tells  Dmitri to forgive her because she loved him but deliberately made him suffer. How is that possible?   She tells him, “I made you all suffer just out of sheer viciousness” and I “drove your old man insane.” It reminds me of what Shakespeare’s King Lear said, “We are to the gods as flies to wanton boys. They kill us for their sport.” These twisted loves are so crazy that Grushenka says If I were God I’d forgive everyone.”

And  in he world of Dostoevsky all of these contradictions can be true, in some sense, in the furnace of the Karamazov’s passion. Somehow, in some very strange way, it makes a kind of sense.

Dmitri begs Grushenka to forgive him for “ruining you with his love.” And that is exactly what he did. He even did the same for Katerina. He ruined two women with his love.

These are all strange loves.

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In a way there are many gods in the novel The Brothers Karamazov. Is Fyodor Karamazov—the father of the 3, or perhaps 4, Karamazov brothers—God? He certainly is God-like. He is fickle, absurd, unreasonable, and demands adherents be faithful no matter what. Sounds a lot like God doesn’t it?  His former serf Gregory is faithful to him when faith has not been earned or deserved. As Dostoevsky explains about Fyodor Karamazov, “For some complex and subtle reasons, that he himself could not explain, he felt an urgent and pressing need to have someone loyal and trustworthy by him.” Again this sounds god-like. If he is a god, then, of course, his 3 or 4 sons, are all sons of God.

Because of the absolute loyalty,  the father liked his youngest son, Alyosha who “touched his very heart, by being there, seeing everything, and condemning nothing.” Remember he is the one who judges no one. Alyosha gave him “something he had never had before—a complete absence of contempt for him…he treated him with invariable kindness—and a completely genuine and sincere affection which Karamazov little deserved.” Of course he treated everyone that way. He was a near saint. Or you could say he was God-like.

Elder   Zosima is certainly god-like. As is Alyosha. But so is Karamazov. He is an absurd god. But in many respect the god of the bible is also absurd. The God of the Bible is the god who lets a small child freeze to death in a shed in a Russian winter. Ivan could not accept such a god.

Dmitri (also known as Mitya) is a god to Katerina. She bows down to him, as Elder Zosima bowed down to Fyodor Karamazov and Dmitri to Grushenka. In fact, Grushenka had father and son “conquered and lying at her feet.” Again a bit God-like.

Dmitri also treats Alyosha like a god. He confesses to Alyosha:

“I’ll make a clean breast of everything, for there must be someone who knows the whole truth. I’ve already told it to the angel in heaven and now I’ll tell it to the angel on earth. Because you are the angel on earth Alyosha.”

What are we to make of so many gods on this religious quest?

In the book The Brothers Karamazov, the monastery was where Alyosha, one of the three sons of the patriarch Fyodor Karamazov, was learning how to find light and love with the assistance of his mentor, the elder, Zosima, a near Saint. The elder lives in a small room in the monastery that was far from grandiose. It is not the Vatican. Nor the lavish home of American televangelists. As Dostoevsky described it, “The whole cell was rather small and drab-looking. It has only the most indispensable furniture, and even that was poor and crude.”

It is interesting that we learn a lot in a chapter of the novel titled, “The Old Buffoon.”  The elder Karamazov as invariably he does, acts like a buffoon.  And he is exactly that.  In fact, he introduced himself to Elder Zosima that way, and then acted the part with gusto. He refers to himself as “one of God’s fools,” and even says there may be an unholy spirit in me too, but it must be one of minor rank—if it were more important it would surely have chosen better quarters.”

Miusov also acted the part of the fool. As Dostoevsky said of Miusov, “He rated his own powers of judgment rather highly, a weakness which was excusable in him, since he was already past fifty, an age at which an intelligent, cultured man of the world of independent means acquires an exaggerated opinion of his own judgment, sometimes despite himself.” I guess I am lucky, not being a man of means nor cultured.

The three sons are each fools but each in their own way.

Is elder Zosima an old fool for living so simply? In the novel when elder Karamazov plays the buffoon to such an extent that his son Alyosha can’t stand to see his father acting so in front of his mentor Zosima. But the elder Zosima, echoing Christ with Mary Magdalene, throws himself at the feet of the Fyodor Karamazov the father. According to Rakitin, “That’s the way it always is with God’s fools: they’re liable to cross themselves at the sight of a tavern and then hurl stones at a church.”

But Zosima impressively treats the fool like a nobleman. There are many of God’s fools in the novel, sometimes in disguise.  Some of the fools are very intelligent. Wise men are harder to find. Isn’t it always like that?