| Sumario: | The Bessarabian writer Costantin Stere (1865–1936) wrote his epic novel, În preajma revoluţiei (On the Eve of the Revolution), as a sort of crowning achievement and meditation on his personal destiny. Based on the author’s biography, the work is structured as a Bildungsroman that traces the upbringing, education, and development of Ion (Vania) Răutu. Born against his mother’s wishes, Vania builds his personality around the complex of the unwanted child. The image of a terrible mother who does not want him causes the son to conceive of the world in terms of aversion and repulsion. From this point on, the protagonist remains stuck in the position of the other, of the one who stands outside the system. During adolescence, this childhood complex evolves into a philosophy of life and a worldview that causes the natural flow of the novel to be overlaid by a theoretical discourse. The framework of his personal temperament (manifested in his exclusion, or in his role as the prodigal son who returns) is projected into a social attitude, into an ideology of political resentment (Narodnichism, Poporanism).
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