Whenever I open a recent translation of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, a copy of which my beloved bought several months ago on her trip to London, I browse through it apparently at random.[1] I am not looking for anything in particular. More often than not, though, I chance upon the very same paragraph about his system or method, which seems to attract me like some powerful magnet:

I don’t wish to be hampered by any restrictions in the compilation of my notes. I shall not attempt any system or method. I will jot things down as I remember them.[2]

I have read the paragraph many times over, but I am still unsure of what to make of it. Am I attracted to it because it reminds me of my own, as it were, system or method? Or is this only an ideal that neither Dostoevsky nor I could maintain for long? But it has just crossed my mind that jotting things down as one remembers them is hardly bereft of any system or method. Actually, it is a system or method in its own right. As well as one to be reckoned with. If only Dostoevsky pursued it to the end…

Footnotes

1. Translated by Constance Garnett, Dublin: Roads, 2013 (first published in 1864).

2. Op. cit., p. 47.