On the Satanic Indestructibility of Manuscripts.

“In Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita, “the protagonist, a writer, burns a manuscript in a moment of despair only to find out later from the Devil that “manuscripts don’t burn.” […] Nikolai Gogol apparently burned the second volume of Dead Souls, and it has been lost forever.”

–Edward Frenkel, “Is the Universe a Simulation?” The New York Times, February 14, 2014, Sunday Review. (A version appeared on February 16, 2014, on page SR12 of the National edition.)