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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