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August 15, 2014 by tomdalzell

Sapanta Cemetery, Romania

Gabby sent photos my friend photos from Sapanta, Romania.  Actually, they say Săpânța.  We say Sapanta.  I publish the photos below.

While in Britany in the summer of 2014, he got word of a collection of hurdy-gurdy player figurines in Romania.  He took the overnight train from Paris to Bucharest.

Have we not all always wanted to visit Romania?  Images, associations, abound.

Dancers StampRomania_Postage_Stamp_-_Friendship

Folk dancers.

Gypsies

Gypsies / Roma people.

dracula_g

Bella Lugosi.

nadiacomaneci2

Nadia Comăneci in the 1976 Summer Olympics.  I took the Bar in the middle of the Olympics.  I was pretty impressed with Nadia, but then again – who wasn’t?

 propaganda

And Tyrants.  Central-casting tyrants.  A bad ending for tyrants.

None of that is especially quirky.  But be patient – Gabby found a cemetery in Săpânța that is big-time quirky, certainly quirky enough to justify the trip.  It’s just 1200 miles through central Europe from Paris.

Săpânța is a village in Maramureș County.

romania-regions-map

As you can see, it is just north of Transylvania.  Our sense is that the region has a grim view of death.  The traditional grave marker among ethnic Hungarians in Romania is a kropjafa.  That word is sometimes translated as “Hungarian totem.”  I prefer no translation to that one.

Kopjafa 1Kopjafa 2

Intricate, beautiful, but a little grim.  But in Săpânța the graveyard is  merry.  They say that Stan Ioan Pătraş started the tradition of festive tombstones with naive depictions of the dead enhanced with poetic humor.  End of words – beginning of images:

-Merry_Cemetery_-_Sapanta_-_Romania_01

the-happy-cemetery-sapanta-maramures-county-romania+12921102186-tpfil02aw-17269

SC 1

merry-cemetery

SC 2 SC 3 SC 4

SC 5SC 6 SC 7

05.Cimitirul-Vesel-Sapanta

339949874_892858d52c

And so on.  Many, many images.  Merriness in the face of death.  What quirk!  In Romanian, our “quirky” is translated as “Neconvenţional.”  Like the French, this seems to lack the nuance of English is distinguishing eccentric or nonconventional from quirk.  But these sure got my attention.

My friend loved the photos.  He is something of a geek when it comes to Soviet art and Warsaw Pact art.   He had in a portfolio in his room nine posters depicting Romania’s bad tyrants:

184391695_c677d200f8_z Ceausescu.poster Epoca-Nicolae-Ceausescu-Gheorghe-Ionita-1024x684ceausescu-apotheosis-540x360 Ceausescu5 ceausescu-tablou01 fd4b8201639e51585c2d42d9758c130a 0a04386155ceda11439e06030e16d615 6a00d8341ce39f53ef011279361c1d28a4-800wi

“They look like such nice tyrants.  Except to Time.”

ceausescu-time-jpg

“Funny that in all of the Warsaw Pact, they were the only ones who ended up on the wrong end of a firing squad when things collapsed. Did you know that 43% of the people of Romania do not believe that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu are dead?  That they had body doubles and that’s who caught the lead?”

I didn’t know that.  I tried to navigate back to the cemetery photos.  What about them?

IMG_3677

 

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