The author tackles the issue of Bessarabia which is approached by Eminescu in his publicistics (history, general Romanian ethnic specificity, the act of annexation by Russia), situating it in the European context. There are analyzed in detail the poet’s early poems from the cycle of The Dramatic Dodecameron in which the image of Bessarabia is found (Bogdan-Dragos, Musatin and the Codru), as well as the poems of May, especially Doina and the quatrain To the Arms.