"The Blizzard" (or The Snow Storm) (, Metél' ) is the second of five short stories that constitute The Belkin Tales by Alexander Pushkin. The manuscript for the story was originally completed October 20, 1830. It was intended to be the last of The Belkin Tales to be published, but Pushkin decided to push the story to the front of the volume. The novella, so comical and at the same time so dramatic, is considered to be one of the masterpieces of Russian literature.

Plot

The plot concerns the relationships of an aristocratic young woman named Maria Gavrilovna (Gavrilovna is a patronymic, not a surname) and the unusual coincidences that accompany them. The following is copied from the program notes by Ledbetter (see sources):

Style

Pushkin uses his story as a means of parody on the classical themes of gothic motivation featured in Lenore (ballad) and Vasily Zhukovsky's ballad, "Svetlana". In both of these ballads, the lover is only able to dream and 'imagine' life with their deceased lover. Pushkin plays on this idea by presenting the same situation for Marya; however, due to a case of most fortuitous and unforeseen circumstances Marya is actually married to her living lover. Pushkin imitates the style of these ballads, but creates it through a set of realistic circumstances.

Themes

Hero

In The Belkin Tales, Pushkin uses a variety of stereotyped gentlemen suitors as the tales' hero. Burmin acts as the hero in this short story. His wild and borderline criminal behaviour towards marrying an unknown bride in the church ultimately led him to marrying the woman of his dreams.

Antihero

Vladimir is the story's counter or antihero. Being a petty land owner, he is too poor to pursue Masha's hand in marriage openly. Vladimir's plans for marriage were brought to a halt by unfortunate circumstances (the blizzard, fatal injury during the war). However, the same unfortunate events are what grant Burmin the ability to lead a successful courtship with Maria.

Structure

Over seventy percent of the sentences within the story are considered to be a simple sentence, which includes segments of simple sentences cut short by a semicolon. The story's plot can be dissected into 13 unique parts:

Adaptations

Film

The story was made into a film by director Vladimir Basov. The film's soundtrack was written by Georgy Sviridov, who later modified the soundtrack into a musical suite of the same name.

Musical

Georgy Sviridov's suite ("musical illustrations to Alexander Pushkin's story"), while mostly unknown in the Americas, is very popular in Russia. Based on the film score that he wrote for Basov's film, the movements of the suite are as follows: