One of the well-known story cycle Povesti Belkina (The Tales of Belkin) which Pushkin wrote during his creative Boldino autumn of 1830, Metel' has, like the remaining four of the these texts, been hailed both as masterpiece and as inconsequential trifle. Pushkin's primary concern in the cycle is clearly that of literary parody; each of the five tales demonstrates his love of tinkering with genre conventions for an effect which is certainly amusing, though perhaps not particularly profound. Like the first of the tales, Vystrel (The Shot), which centres on a duel, and the fifth, Baryshnia-krest'ianka (The aristocratic peasant girl), a Shakespearean romance, Metel' takes its inspiration from the genre of the Romantic tale popular at the time, while story three, Grobovshchik (The Undertaker) is a version of the popular ghost story of the thirties, and story four, Stantsionnyi smotritel' (The Stationmaster) an ironic version of the Karamzinian sentimental tale.
Like much Romantic literature, the plot of Metel' is thoroughly implausible. A young couple decide to elope, but a snowstorm prevents the groom from reaching the church. Meanwhile, a passing stranger, Burmin, allows himself to be mistaken for the bridegroom and takes part in the ceremony for a joke, before leaving without explaining himself. The heroine, married to a man whose identity she has never learned, falls in love four years later - with Burmin himself. All is revealed when the couple explain that the only obstacle to a happy ending is the secret wedding service in which both were involved.
The story does not gain its merit from plot, but from tone. The brooding atmosphere is initially created by the quotation from Zhukovskii's sentimental verse which prefaces the text, and the theme of the dark and stormy night continues with the snowstorm of the title which impedes the heroine's marriage to her lover. Pushkin uses not only the pathetic fallacy in his story of storm-tossed lovers, but adds familiar romantic touches; the beloved of Maria, our heroine, is of course an impecunious officer, there is naturally a correspondence between the two lovers à la Richardson, while the shadow of parental disapproval, of course, hangs over this nonsensical Romeo and Juliet. Maria, brought up on French novels and consequently ripe to fall in love, as the author snidely suggests, is not only Juliet, but Clarissa, Harriet Byron, Julie or Delphine, a Romantic character in outline reminiscent of Pushkin's very much more complex heroine, Tat'iana from his novel in verse Evgenii Onegin. Indeed, the perils of living life according to literature often provides the main comic thrust behind Pushkin's literary parodies, and in other texts, lead him to more philosophical speculations about the nature of reality and the possibility of freedom from conventions, both literary and social.
In Metel', the initial story of lovers impeded in their attempt to achieve joyous and sanctified union by the fateful snowstorm which brings Maria her 'real' husband (the man whom on more mature reflection, she realises is the right spouse for her, i.e. Burmin) is continued into a mystery, as the romance between Maria and Burmin is now hindered by the secret they both conceal. Against this background of traditional doomed love, Pushkin offers more prosaic scenes, undercutting the characters' romanticism with his own amused and down-to earth comments. After the momentous night of the snowstorm, the household goes about its business without realising what has occurred. Later, when Maria, in typical romantic fashion, becomes ill after her traumatic secret marriage, her parents agree that she can marry her impecunious beloved if she really wishes, a touch which nicely deflates the Juliet situation. Pushkin, commenting on Maria's family, has snide comments to say about bourgeois reactions to passion, for Maria's family happily take refuge in platitudes, and thus again love is undercut by cliché in this marvellously crafted text of nuances and sly deflation. Having taken the text down to this level of prosaic ease, Pushkin then winds the reader's tension up again by introducing the mystery of why Maria, now apparently able to rush to her beloved, does not do so. Keeping the reader in suspense about what actually happened in the church, Pushkin brings us to another beautifully staged romantic scene, in which Burmin goes to profess his love to Maria, who is seated appropriately, in a white dress, under a willow, and holding a book, 'a real heroine of romance', as the author remarks.
Nicely combining the Romantic concept of fate, and his own prosaic thoughts on how life works out in the end without all this drama, Pushkin brings the text to a happy resolution, and sends the reader away amused and entertained by a tale the message of which contains an ironic paradox offered by a writer; beware of too much reading, for it may get you into trouble.