Death in the Forest (Novel Based on a True Story)

"She was so beautiful that, drunk as I was, I forgot everything on this earth and crushed her in my arms. She began vowing to me that she had never loved anybody but me. And that was right, she did love me. But in the very heat of her vows, she suddenly came out with a revolting sentence I am so unhappy if I hadn't married Urbenin. I could marry the count now. Everything that had been simmering in my breast boiled over. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of revolution of disgust. I seized the tiny nasty little creature by the shoulders and threw her to the ground as if she were a ball. My fury was at its height. So ..... I finished her off ..... I just finished with Kuzma and so on ........." Chekhov's name rightly stands beside those of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Chekhov hated tyranny, falsehood, the complacency of the 'strong' and the humanity of weak and attracted vulgarity in all his forms. Most of all he valued truth, human dignity and moral beauty.