Lidija P Nagulov on The Patchwork Principle

This is spot on! My favorite commentary on the nature of art is from Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, where the Master, a writer, had in a moment of weakness thrown his life’s work’s manuscript into the flames, only for Dr Voland (the…. devil? But, like, a pretty chill one) to produce it later completely unscathed with the laconic words ‘manuscripts don’t burn’. Bulgakov himself had burned the manuscript to Master and Margarita in fear of getting into serious trouble with Stalin’s censorship machinery because the book plays with religious themes, only to recreate it from memory later when regime change allowed it. Manuscripts don’t burn :)