Translated by Diana Ferraro, Emilia Pardo Bazán’s haunting short story, AIR, explores the fragile boundary between love and madness, reality and delusion. A young woman, Cecilia Bohorques, clings to a single phrase spoken by her lover—"You are nothing. You are colder than air."—until it consumes her entirely. In her mind, she becomes air itself, untouchable, untethered, lost to the world.
In this chilling and poetic tale, Bazán, a pioneer of Spanish literature, delivers a devastating meditation on obsession, longing, and the weightlessness of unfulfilled love.
"There is a madness that is loud and wild, but there is also a madness as soft as a whisper, as weightless as air."
