Bulgakov used every freedom inside the covers of his ‘sunset’ novel. These pages bristle with a deeply informed—Bulgakov was a gentle destroyer—indifference to every dogma, whether historical, religious, political, or artistic. Bulgakov’s earthbound Christ—he is not even Christ in these pages, but a man named Yeshua—ignores the mythology of the Gospels and Soviet atheism both, as does a Satan figure who is munificent and majestic rather than petty and evil.
