Poem of the Air

Produced in 2017 at the studio of Danish artist-engraver Torben Bo Halbirk, these etchings with bitumen aquatints are inspired by three moments from The Poem of Air and the 4 recurring words:  Dream, Street, Staircase and Door found in Marina Tsvetaeva's 1927 notebooks.

The "dream" is first of all the aspiration to perceive the breath and the presence of the loved one (Plate 1)

The 'street' represents the limit between the terrestrial and aerial worlds (Plate 2)

While the "staircase", ascending from stratum to stratum, makes one experience the resistance of successive layers of air, generating a painful sensation of suffocation (Plate 3)

The fourth panel, "door", remains unfinished due to the death of Bo Halbirk in 2018.