The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta
Photographs by Peter Kayafas
Translations by Adrian G. Sahlean
Essay by Sanda Golopentia



Sapanta Graveyard

'The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta' (Cimitirul Vesel de la Sapanta) -
a Purple Martin Press book, 2007, was designed by renowned Dutch designer Tessa van der Waals, of the unique Romanian graveyard in Maramures, northern Romania, featuring humorous epitaphs on painted crosses by New York photographer Peter Kayafas with translations by 
A. G. Sahlean
, an introductory essay by Sanda Golopentia
(Brown University) and a Translator Note.


Sapanta Jacket Cover

Sapanta Graveyard

The book was launched in New York in February 2008 and Boston in July 2008 at the Kayafas Gallery.

A short presentation movie with cross details and sample epitaphs narrated on original Maramures music can be viewed following this U-Tube link HERE.


Cross Detail

Cross Detail

The Album is not sold in bokstores
Exclusive Global Arts price $39.95!
(sells elsewhere for $55 + S&H)


Cross Detail

Cross Detail

Here are excerpts from the July 15th 2008 Boston Phoenix review "Grave matters -The MerryCemetery of Sapanta" following the Bsoton launching:

"Entering the small back room at Gallery Kayafas you feel you’ve been transported into the shadowy pages of a small, mysterious book... /The book/...celebrates the riveting and crude carved wooden grave markers in an isolated village in northern Transylvania. It also chronicles the germination and fruition of a real folk art.


Cross Detail


Cross Detail of founder
Ioan Stan Patras

A carver of gates and crosses, Ion Stan Patras (1908–1977) eventually began carving the likenesses of his fellow villagers for their tombs.
Over time, the likenesses became representations of a central theme in the life of the deceased (a woman who sang in her church choir, a man who loved his oxen) or, more dramatically, a re-enactment of the moment of death.


Sapanta Graveyard


Cross Detail

Lightning strikes one ill-fated farmer; a rabid horse spits in the face of another; vehicular accidents abound; a youth meets his end rollerblading in a Paris subway; the shepherd Saulic Ion was shot and beheaded by a Hungarian....
But the enchanting power of these colorfully painted scenes is only partly explained by Patras’s carving. Below each portrait or tableau, a poem has been etched into the wood, and thanks to a linguistic device that’s as simple as Patras’s sculptural style, The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta casts a hypnotic spell.


Cross Detail


Cross Detail

Each poem is delivered in the first person, the voice of the dead. All are terse, idiosyncratic, and utterly personal — you’re delivered into the frequent sorrows, occasional joys, and continuing passions of a people.
The poems’ translator, Adrian G. Sahlean, has rendered the rhymed trochaic couplets of the Romanian into English that’s earthy, uncomplicated, and direct. The result reads as uncompromised and strange..."



Cross Detail
The book also features an introductory essay by Sanda Golopentia (read it HERE)
and a Translator Note
(click for either English or Romanian.)

The Album is not sold in bokstores
Exclusive Global Arts price $39.95!
(sells elsewhere for $55 + S&H)