The Thousand Voices of Laughter.
On the death of Nando Snozzi. By Markus Zohner.
Translated from the German original, Die tausend Stimmen des Lachens.
Nando dies, you are orphaned.
It is hard simply to keep going, always to keep going, to try to plough this stony ground and to sow it, this endless field whose furrows run dead straight to the horizon and there, at the horizon, which is of course the end, meet the sky.
Nando simply dies. Goes into the water, his beloved sea, swims and romps and dives in this sea that again and again he called his element, not the water, the sea. Surfaces again like a whale, like a dolphin, weightless and happy, the salt water in his beard and in his hair and the sun of Sardinia on his skin. When his time as a sea mammal is over and he goes ashore, comes into the air, he becomes the giant he is, and his laughter the loud rough laughter makes the air tremble and spills out as a great roar of happiness over the world, over plants, animals and human beings, and turns all the pitch, all the bad luck, which is to say everything, into gold, into pure gold. Gravity takes him into its power and the sun under its rays, happily he hauls himself ashore, laughs, rolls, the whole world in his laughter shines gold. The first fish to leave the water, to look out, stands up, roaring.
Something strikes him, a mighty blow fells the mighty man, and the strength his endless strength breaks breaks apart and with it the laughter, which frays into a thousand voices into the thousand voices of the faces of his paintings. These faces, his faces, the naked amphibians and apes with their stiff limbs, the wolves and human skulls with chains, and diamonds for eyes, the beaked gas-mask men and generals and snakes, the crowned cockerels and bare-breasted oracles beside the sow and all the in-between beings, his in-between beings, in Nando's dying laughter begin to whisper to shout to rustle to scold to howl to croak to breathe to rasp and to lisp, and for all eternity they, whom he brought to the surface into the light before the eyes of us all will keep hissing and rattling and chirping and stammering and grunting and whining and gabbling and gurgling and murmuring. Murmuring. Murmuring on always murmuring on.
And we, his orphans, must keep going alone, left alone, alone without him, keep ploughing, keep sowing, alone on this hard, wide field. Luckily there are the faces, his faces, the naked amphibians and apes with their stiff limbs, the wolves and human skulls with chains, who stammer and cackle and whine and bleat and squawk to us, are there, are with us, beside us, to protect us from the cold from the hopelessness from being alone, from this terrible, this ice-cold, motherless aloneness. Are with us for all eternity, made of the gold of his galactic laughter of his trust and brought to the surface set into life by his strength his strength the strength of his art. His art.
Keep going. Keep going. Always keep going. Plough, this endless stony field whose furrows run dead straight to the horizon and there, at the horizon, which is of course the end, meet the sky.
Markus Zohner
The artist Nando Snozzi died on 19 August 2026. The cultural life of Ticino has grown poorer: we have lost a great friend, colleague, ally, protector, we have lost a wonderful human being.
Patrizia Barbuiani for Nando Snozzi
Nando Snozzi's voice IT
Two conversations with Markus Zohner and a film, all in Italian.
