Fyodor Dostoevsky on Love and Suffering
"The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," in The Best Short Stories of Dostoevsky, trans. David Magarshack (New York: The Modern Library, 1992; first published 1877), 335-6.
But are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be nature's
law? And if that is an earth there, is it the same earth as ours? Just
the same poor, unhappy, but dear, dear earth, and beloved forever and
ever? Arousing like our earth the same poignant love for herself even
in the most ungrateful of her children? I kept crying, deeply moved by
an uncontrollable, rapturous love for the dear old earth I had left
behind... Suddenly a strange feeling of some great and sacred jealousy
blazed up in my heart. "How is such a repetition possible and why? I
love, I can only love the earth I've left behind, stained with my blood
when, ungrateful wretch that I am, I extinguished my life by shooting
myself through the heart. But never, never have I ceased to love that
earth, and even on the night I parted from it I loved it perhaps more
poignantly than ever. Is there suffering on this new earth? On our
earth we can truly love only with suffering and through suffering! We
know not how to love otherwise. We know no other love. I want suffering
in order to love. I want and thirst this very minute to kiss, with
tears streaming down my cheeks, the one and only earth I have left
behind. I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!
Sin, Evil, Inhumanity + The Argument from Evil

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