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

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

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.

Copyright (#u2c6ef4c4-eb1e-5348-83bd-8b7d0ea57ae7)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com)

First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2015

First published in the United States by Harper Wave in 2015

Copyright © Joseph Luzzi 2015

Joseph Luzzi asserts his moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library

In a Dark Wood is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying details have been changed.

Cover design by Robin Bilardello

Cover photograph © Sheldon Serkin/EyeEm/Getty Images

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008100667

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008100643

Version: 2016-05-17

Dedication (#u2c6ef4c4-eb1e-5348-83bd-8b7d0ea57ae7)

For Isabel

l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle

Epigraph (#u2c6ef4c4-eb1e-5348-83bd-8b7d0ea57ae7)

Every grief story is a love story.

Contents

Cover (#uaf76051e-74a7-582f-b28f-542f4a4ae49a)

Title Page (#u0ce9a010-f279-56e3-b7b0-23a09d548dfe)

Copyright (#u03b1f137-240d-5221-b0ca-8412d1f7054d)

Dedication (#u19bc2239-3e82-5b0b-8273-54aca9a54345)

Epigraph (#u9933b1b7-9b50-5095-bc88-b4b71540d0dd)

Prologue (#uccf3bfc9-b22e-5d51-b69e-51857f49bcd9)

I: THE UNDERWORLD (#u2f5455a3-a163-56f8-9794-888cea0a28be)

CHAPTER 1 An Hour with the Angels (#ufb6fb821-edce-5ad9-a675-daf71ac644b9)

CHAPTER 2 Consider Your Seed (#uf13cd83a-5af2-513a-9d80-f557aeea5826)

CHAPTER 3 Love–40 (#litres_trial_promo)

II: MOUNT PURGATORY (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 4 Astrid and Anja (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 5 The Gears of Justice (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 6 Rough Draft (#litres_trial_promo)

III: ONE THOUSAND AND ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 7 Posthoc7 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 8 Fathers and Sons (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 9 Open Hours (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Translations and Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)