The article highlights the drama of unadapted intellectuals in the Romanian prose at the crossroads of nineteenth-twentieth centuries as well as in the interwar period, the latter marked by critical transition from traditional society with a stable hierarchy of moral values to a modern society in the process of becoming, in which traditional values are disturbed. Problematic characters that are permanently and irretrievably in dispute with the society surrounding them can be distinguished in the woks of Alexandru Vlahuta, Ioan Al. Bratescu-Voinesti, Mihail Sadoveanu and Camil Petrescu.