Crasescu, Victor

Crăsescu, Victor 

(pen name, Stefan Basarabianu). Born 1850 in Kishinev; died 1917. Moldavian writer. The son of an official.

Crăsescu studied at the theological seminary in Kishinev and then at the University of Novorossiisk. He participated in the Narodnik (Populist) movement, then emigrated to Switzerland, and in 1879 moved to Rumania, where he joined the socialists. He graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Bucharest and became a physician.

His Sketches From the Life of the Kishinev Seminary (1884–91) were written under the influence of N. G. Pomialovskii's The Bursa Sketches. Crasescu's stories (”Is He Guilty?” 1884, “The Storm,” 1884, and “The Savage,” 1885) depict the life of impoverished Bessarabian peasants and Dobruja fishermen; country life with its social contradictions is described in the novel The Jew (1898). Crasescu was also attracted to the theme of “new men,” which he used in the novels Rapture (1884) and Spirka (1887).

WORKS

Opere alese. Kishinev, 1960.

REFERENCE

Istoriia literaturii moldovenesht', vol. 1. Kishinev, 1958.