In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love - Hardcover

Luzzi, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0008100632 ISBN 13: 9780008100636

Publisher: William Collins, 2015

Synopsis

A story of love and grief. ‘I became a widower and a father on the same day’ says Joseph Luzzi. His book tells how Dante’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ helped him to endure his grief, raise their infant daughter, and rediscover love.

When you lose your whole world in a moment, where do you turn? Joseph Luzzi found the answer in Dante’s opening of The Divine Comedy: ‘In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.’

One cold November morning, Luzzi, a professor and Dante scholar, was told his pregnant wife Katherine had been in a car accident. She did not survive, but their daughter Isabel did, delivered by emergency Caesarean a mere forty-five minutes before her mother died. In one terrible instant, Luzzi found himself both a widower and a father.

In the aftermath of an unthinkable tragedy, Luzzi turned to the support of his Italian immigrant family but it wasn’t until he turned to Dante’s epic poem – a poem he had devoted his life to studying and teaching – that he found a way to resurrect his life. Following the same structure as Dante’s epic poem, Luzzi is shepherded out of his own ‘dark wood,’ passing through the grief-stricken Inferno, the Purgatory of healing and learning to be a father to Isabel, and ultimately stepping into the Paradise of rediscovered love.

A meditation on the influence of great art and power to give us strength in our darkest moments, ‘In a Dark Wood’ opens the door into the mysteries of Dante’s enduring classic. Beautifully written, poignant and unflinchingly honest, Luzzi’s book is a hybrid of heartrending memoir and meaningful insight into one of the greatest pieces of literature in all history. Drawing us into man’s descent into hell and back, it is Dante’s journey, Luzzi’s and our very own.

About this title

Review:

‘Powerful and indispensable, Joseph Luzzi unites emotion and ideas in a work that defies categorization, except for the category marked "brilliant." If every academic wrote like this, the humanities would be prospering’ Gary Shteyngart

‘‘In a Dark Wood’ charts Luzzi’s journey through the hell of mourning and the purgatory of recovery, juxtaposing diapers and dating with demons and the damned ... there are many shrewd observations’ Financial Times

‘Like Dante’s epic poem, Luzzi’s narrative moves structurally through the stages of the Underworld, from Hell into Paradise ... Luzzi honestly grapples with profound questions about being a man and father in this very literary and very personal work’ Publishers Weekly

‘Joseph Luzzi lived through something terrible, and has made something beautiful. ‘In a Dark Wood’ is a memoir of love and loss; but more than that, it is a powerful testimony to the consolation – even salvation – that an engagement with great literature can supply’ Rebecca Mead, author of ‘My Life in Middlemarch’

‘Reads hell in a new light’ Vanity Fair

From the Back Cover:

When you lose your whole world in a moment, where do you turn?

On a cold November morning, Joseph Luzzi, a Dante scholar and professor at Bard College, found himself racing to the hospital--his wife, Katherine, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, had been in a horrible car accident. In one terrible instant, Luzzi became both a widower and a first-time father.

In the aftermath of unthinkable tragedy, Luzzi relied on the support of his Italian immigrant family, returning to his childhood home to grieve and care for his infant daughter. But it wasn't until he turned to The Divine Comedy--a poem he had devoted his life to studying and teaching--that he learned how to resurrect his life. Following the same structure as Dante's epic poem, Luzzi is shepherded out of his own "dark wood," passing through the grief-stricken Inferno, the Purgatory of healing, and ultimately stepping into the Paradise of rediscovered love.

Beautifully written, poignant, insightful, and unflinchingly honest, In a Dark Wood is a hybrid of heartrending memoir and a meditation on the power of great art to give us strength in our darkest moments. Drawing us into hell and back, it is Dante's journey, Joseph Luzzi's, and our very own.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Collins
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0008100632
• ISBN 13: 9780008100636
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320