In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love, by Joseph Luzzi
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In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love, by Joseph Luzzi
Free PDF Ebook In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love, by Joseph Luzzi
In the aftermath of a heartbreaking tragedy, a scholar and writer uses Dante’s Divine Comedy to shepherd him through the dark wood of grief and mourning—a rich and emotionally resonant memoir of suffering, hope, love, and the power of literature to inspire and heal the most devastating loss.
Where do we turn when we lose everything? Joseph Luzzi found the answer in the opening of The Divine Comedy: “In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark wood.”
When Luzzi’s pregnant wife was in a car accident—and died forty-five minutes after giving birth to their daughter, Isabel—he finds himself a widower and first-time father at the same moment. While he grieves and cares for his infant daughter, miraculously delivered by caesarean before his wife passed, he turns to Dante’s Divine Comedy for solace.
In a Dark Wood tells the story of how Dante helps the author rebuild his life. He follows the structure of The Divine Comedy, recounting the Inferno of his grief, the Purgatory of healing and raising Isabel on his own, and then Paradise of the rediscovery of love.
A Dante scholar, Luzzi has devoted his life to teaching and writing about the poet. But until he turned to the epic poem to learn how to resurrect his life, he didn’t realize how much the poet has given back to him. A meditation on the influence of great art and its power to give us strength in our darkest moments, In a Dark Wood opens the door into the mysteries of Dante’s epic poem. Beautifully written and flawlessly balanced, Luzzi’s book is a hybrid of heart-rending memoir and critical insight into one of the greatest pieces of literature in all of history. In a Dark Wood draws us into man’s descent into hell and back: it is Dante’s journey, Joseph Luzzi’s, and our very own.
In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love, by Joseph Luzzi- Amazon Sales Rank: #231607 in Books
- Brand: Luzzi, Joseph
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Released on: 2015-06-02
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.05" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 320 pages
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, New York Times bestselling author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story)“An engrossing struggle to build a life after enormous personal loss and the luminous power of literature to transform sorrow’s exile into a kind of blessing.” (New York Journal of Books)“A heartfelt memoir…[Luzzi’s] is a quest so universal that we can all fin ourselves in his struggle.” (Christian Science Monitor)“This is not an academic book about Dante. It’s an elegant and moving memoir of one man’s journey through grief and finally back to life.” (Albany Times Union)“Luzzi’s new memoir transforms unthinkable tragedy into literary gold. More than simply a memoir of mourning, In a Dark Wood testifies to the life-giving importance of literature and what it has to teach us.” (BookPage.com)“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)“Heartbreaking. Heartrending. Heart-stopping.” (Vanity Fair)“Luzzi’s story is intensely personal, but holds universal appeal for anyone who has experienced love and loss. As he grasps blindly for routes out of his personal underworld, both he and the reader discover that only a change of mind and heart can open the way to love and fulfillment.” (Booklist)“Luzzi honestly grapples with profound questions about being a man and father in this very literary and very personal work.” (Publishers Weekly)“A forthright chronicle of emergence from darkness.” (Kirkus Reviews)“Heartfelt memoir… [told with] raw and unguarded candor.” (New York Times Book Review)“…achingly beautiful… (Entertainment Weekly)“Luzzi has written a memoir that is at once inspiring and fascinating. Beautifully written, with humor as well as depth, this book is a must for all serious readers.” (Hudson Valley News)“You say you’ve not read The Divine Comedy…. It doesn’t matter. Luzzi writes with the economy and flair of a novelist…[and] makes it all personal when he twines his historical analysis…with his own dark emotional terrain.” (Chronogram)“In his memoir...Luzzi adopts Dante’s journey as his own. He writes about the long, difficult path through the hell of grief in search of healing, [exploring] the power that Dante’s poetry still holds for modern audiences.” (The Thread, MPR News)“Compelling” (Providence Journal)“The book soared when Luzzi used Dante’s words to explain how grief made him feel.” (Salon)
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 the Author
Joseph Luzzi holds a doctorate from Yale and teaches at Bard. He is the author of My Two Italies, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy, which won the Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies from the Modern Language Association. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Bookforum, and the Times Literary Supplement.
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Most helpful customer reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful. A compelling memoir By Kris In a Dark Wood is a compelling memoir about Luzzi's journey through grief and the healing process following his wife Katherine's untimely death. A professor of Italian and a Dante scholar, Luzzi draws parallels between The Divine Comedy and his own experiences in the dark wood of grief.Having studied English during my time as an undergraduate student, I appreciate how Luzzi relates Dante's great work to his personal experiences and finds meaning in one through the other (and vice versa). It's actually what drew me to this book in the first place, and I love how Luzzi intertwines his story with that of Dante's work. I do wish that I had read The Divine Comedy before picking up this book. It has been years since I've looked at Dante's work. While Luzzi does a good job explaining the connections that he makes between Dante's work and his own experiences, a refresher would have helped me to better understand the significance behind Luzzi's references from a more critical perspective (the casual reader shouldn't have too many problems).That said, In a Dark Wood has a complicated narration. Luzzi not only intertwines his story following Katherine's death with that of The Divine Comedy, he also includes anecdotes from his college days and from his parents' lives. While I like all the connections that Luzzi makes, he jumps around a lot from scene to scene, from one point in time to another. Furthermore, though his book follows a general timeline, he does not entirely narrate events in chronological order, so it can be difficult to piece events together in their proper order, especially if you don't finish the book in one sitting. I would have preferred if Luzzi cut back on some points and focused more on the immediate storyline. I do appreciate how he ties in his Italian heritage and how he shows the importance of family and friends in his life. Luzzi shows the ups and downs and how his family supported him in his time of grief. The inclusion of his family members' stories also serves to show where he comes from and how it influences his relationships with different women.In reflecting on his family, his personal experiences, and on Dante's work, Luzzi gives a profound commentary on love, life, and loss. As he tells his daughter Isabel at the end of his book, "it's not what lands you in the dark wood that defines you, but what you do to make it out—just as you can't understand the first words of a story until you've read the last ones" (quoted from ARC). In a Dark Wood is a heavy read in that Luzzi is weighted by his grief throughout much of the book. In his grief, he makes many poor decisions, including his neglect of his fatherly duties to Isabel, and he continuously finds himself unable to move forward with his life. The excruciatingly slow progress out of the dark wood can get frustrating to readers who haven't gone through similar experiences. Nevertheless, Luzzi's narration stays true to reality in showing readers the challenges of working through grief. Through it all, Luzzi is there reflecting on his thoughts and actions during his time in the dark wood, and he makes ample use of The Divine Comedy to comment on love and loss.Content (contains potential spoilers)- Questions about the afterlife and if humans have a soul that lives on after death. (Includes some questions on religion and God's existence.- Relations with multiple women following Katherine's death, includes sex (not explicit).- In his grief over his wife's untimely death, Luzzi becomes an absent father and leaves much of the child-raising duties to his mother and his sisters. He also gets into heated arguments with some people, including a lover and his mother over his behavior. They aren't described in great detail.- I do not recall any language that ought to be mentioned. If there was any, they are few and sparse.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. An Enchanting Memoir Mixed with Classic Literature By Stephanie Ward 4.5 Stars'In a Dark Wood' is the enchanting memoir of a man's journey through a very dark part in his life - the death of his beloved wife - and how Dante's epic poem, The Divine Comedy, was able to lead him through his grief and pain. I don't normally read a lot of memoirs, but this one grabbed my attention at the mention of Dante's classic poem. Being an English major in both college and graduate school, I have read this timeless piece several times. I'll admit that it still confounds me at times and there's such an incredible depth to it that it feels like I'll never have enough time or the skill to peel back all of its layers. I was curious as to how a memoir that identified with Dante's poem would be like - it was surely going to be a hit or miss type of situation. When I read the book, I was happily surprised that the author was actually able to meld together his own personal story with his studious journey through The Divine Comedy, without being boring or dry at all. For me, it was actually the opposite. The author's life story was both heartbreaking and full of hope, and I was really intrigued by how he associated so intimately with the poem. Aside from those aspects, the author also gives the reader a bit of commentary and explanation of the poem itself - which, for my nerdy self, was ridiculously fascinating. Even though one would expect this type of book to be boring or only appeal to a slim portion of readers - the author surprised me again on this front. The writing was done in a conversational tone, so it felt as if he were speaking to the reader directly instead of lecturing in front of a class. Even the parts of the book where he explains passages of the poem and what they mean are compelling.By writing his memoir in this way - reconciling the hardest journey of his life with Dante's masterpiece and giving the reader insight into both - the author has truly changed my opinion and experience of reading memoirs. It's true that not all readers will enjoy this book as much as I did - I attribute much of my fascination and interest to the fact that it was centered around The Divine Comedy, which as an English student (for life), instantly grabbed my attention. Even if you aren't an English scholar or fan of the classics - this memoir will still captivate you from the moment you begin reading right up until the final words. The author's story is so full of raw emotion and a roller coaster ride of feelings that it will feel as if you experience all of it yourself. Although it's written in a conversational tone, the author uses fantastic descriptions and attention to detail along with lots of vivid imagery to really bring the reader inside of the book. I very highly recommend this memoir to readers who enjoy memoirs and autobiographies, as well as those interested in classic literature, especially the focus of the book - Dante's The Divine Comedy. I honestly think that this book will appeal to fans of all genres and is something that everyone should at least give a try. I think it will really surprise you - in the best of ways.Disclosure: I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Reliving Dante's journey: a professor's tale By John L Murphy Starting with horror, as his wife dies in a car accident and his daughter must be delivered prematurely, this Bard College professor of Italian finds his familiarity with Dante put to suddenly relevant use. He turns to not only the Commedia but Vita Nuova to find solace and guidance as he compares his slow exit from hell, his purgatorial climb as he tries to raise his daughter, deal with his working-class immigrant family in Rhode Island, and his heavenly ascent as he regains his balance and returns love."Only after losing this love did I grasp his awful wisdom. One of you will have to face the world alone someday and inhabit the Underworld--the hell at the start of Dante's descent into a dark wood."Luzzi's memoir, so close upon his last on his family's emigration from Calabria to the New World in the 1950s, finds himself integrating uncomfortable truths. How he felt as he was sued by the man who hit his wife. How his Velveeta-eating family, and Old World matriarchy, clashed with his elite liberal-arts teaching situation and his Yale-trained mentality, as a driven academic who refused to take the paid leave offered him after his wife's death. How he dated again, and longed for another.He also feels guilt, for he finds it easier to leave his daughter with his family, the better to do research and escape his grief by writing. He is astute enough a scholar (and tenured enviably early at an eminent institution, a fact he comes to appreciate less than it seems he should, given the competition) to realize that "The Divine Comedy was not a self-help manual, a means to a practical end that I was able to negotiate based on Dante's advice." The book is no facile parallel, but it employs the rough parallels as they align. He does not try to force the triple scheme of Dante onto his own chapter grid. It is there, it works as a general metaphor, and it keeps his autobiographical tendencies in check.Out of "long study and great love," as the Florentine poet put it so elegantly, Luzzi learns again to join his medieval mentor in a moral: "it's not what lands you in the dark wood that defines you, but what you do to make it out--just as you can't understand the first words of the story until you've read the last ones." So, like the Commedia, the teller comes round to where his quest began.
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