Ever felt sad and depressed when dealing with losing a loved one? Obvious as this answer may be, there’s a hidden place in Europe that would respond differently.
The population of Săpânța village, North-West Romania, merely accounts for 3,000 inhabitants (livestock included). The thing that makes it so special is, luridly, death.
The Merry Cemetery, to be more precise. The name stems from its tombstones which, unlike standard graveyard sobriety, contain funny slapstick rhymes and naive paintings about the tragic deaths of the interred.
Here’s a snippet from one of the tombs, for instance:
„Underneath this cross of stone
Lie my mother-in-law’s bones
Three more days if she had lived
I’d have lied and she would read.”
„Underneath this cross of stone
Lie my mother-in-law’s bones
Three more days if she had lived
I’d have lied and she would read.”
And as poetically English as this may sound, this is in fact a translation. Because they're all written in Romanian - a tough language to apprehend for the regular foreigner, all the more using regionalisms and archaisms - making the place unapproachable for non-Romanian speakers.
But believe it or not, there’s an Irishman called Peter Hurley who’s been trying to promote the place for years with his Intercultural Association for Tradition. Moved in Romania some 20 years ago, he’s become so fond of the local culture that he settled. And to solve the aforementioned problem of the Merry Cemetery, he started to translate the funny death poems in English.
What came out was a website where he took it one step further and actually adapted the tomb poems, maintaining the same poetic style, including rhyme, rhythm, verse length and funny-naive tone of voice.
Moreover, he managed to turn it into a Twitter-centred campaign. For this, every translated poem (work in progress, by the way, since there are hundreds of them) has been turned into a 160-character rhyming tweet teasing the respective rhyming tomb. You can check them on @MerryCemetery.
For more information or materials you can contact Peter on contact@merrycemetery.com or https://www.facebook.com/PeterHurley.official
More info: merrycemetery.com
This is what the place looks like
Tombstones are in the shape of traditional crosses
Check out the guy with the truck. Last picture ever taken.
Source: www.flickr.com