From the World of Those Who Do Not Speak - Emil Garleanu

From the World of Those Who Do Not Speak is considered by Romanian literary critics and historians to be a series of small prose poems dedicated to the creatures alongside humans, which they almost never bother to notice. Perhaps only children, driven by curiosity and enlivened by innocence, attribute to birds, insects, and animals from farms or the wild, soul, feelings, morality, and spirit of sacrifice, judgment, and destiny.

The stories about those who do not speak, true literary miniatures, are small lyrical and touching reflections on struggle, defeat, victory, and death. Thanks to this book, Emil Gârleanu should stand proudly alongside Axel Munthe, another writer who loved animals very much.

Emil Gârleanu (1878–1914) was a Romanian writer and journalist. Raised by an aunt after his parents separated, he was a sensitive child, often lost in states of reverie. After a brief career as an officer, marked by a disciplinary transfer to Bârlad for violating regulations that prohibited military personnel from engaging in journalistic activities, he moved to Bucharest, where he dedicated himself entirely to literature.

He was an advocate of the Sămănătorist movement and was among the founders of the Romanian Writers' Society. He was also a film director and screenwriter. His notable works include The Old People (1905), From the World of Those Who Do Not Speak (1910), and Odobac's Walnut Tree (1910).

"From his work, there remains a volume that continues to delight. It is, of course, From the World of Those Who Do Not Speak, composed, after the model of Jules Renard's Histoires naturelles, of small monographic portraits of lives (the little beetle, the bug, the cockroach, the ant, the jay, the tomcat, the squirrel, the horse, etc.). The tenderness of the prose writer manifests itself beneficially this time, and the book is still read today (not only by children) with delight." - Zigu Ornea, Romanian literary historian