Oltre la selva oscura

by Joseph Luzzi

"Un giorno tutti ci troveremo in una selva oscura. Per me quel giorno giunse otto anni fa. Ero uscito di casa in una mattina come tutte le altre; a mezzogiorno ero vedovo e padre." Spaesato e travolto dal senso di vuoto per l'improvvisa morte della moglie, a Joseph non bastano le tenere smorfie della piccola Isabel per restare ancorato alla terra. D'istinto si aggrappa al mondo lontano delle sue radici: ritorna in seno alla famiglia d'origine, un nutrito gruppo di immigrati calabresi, che lo circonda di un affetto pragmatico e silenzioso, e lì cerca la forza per ricominciare a vivere. La trova nel poeta che più ama, Dante, che nel dolore della perdita - per la donna amata, per la sempre rimpianta Firenze - ha vissuto e scritto un capolavoro. Attraverso la "Divina Commedia", Joseph scende nell'Inferno della solitudine, risale verso la delicata speranza del Purgatorio e trova nel Paradiso la riappacificazione con i suoi fantasmi e la promessa di una futura felicità. Che ha il volto sorridente della sua bimba, compagna dolce e paziente di questo travagliato viaggio, e di un nuovo amore. "Oltre la selva oscura" è un memoir di grande impatto emotivo, coinvolgente e universale, che celebra i legami più autentici - "Casa mia era il respiro di mia figlia sulla mia spalla" - ma anche lo straordinario potere della letteratura. Perché solo una grande opera sa entrare in risonanza con i nostri sentimenti, guarisce il dolore e ci restituisce la capacità di amare.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Death, Grief, Literary Criticism, Biography Memoir

274 pages, Hardcover

First published June 2, 2015

About the author

Bio: Joseph Luzzi

Joseph Luzzi (PhD, Yale) teaches Comparative Literature and Italian Studies at Bard College. His most recent book is Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (2022). He is also the author of Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy (2008), winner of the MLA’s Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies; A Cinema of Poetry: Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film (2014); My Two Italies (2014), a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection; In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love (2015), a Vanity Fair “Must-Read” selection that has been translated into multiple languages. Two forthcoming books include his new translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova; and his study Dante’s “Divine Comedy”: A Biography will appear in 2024. Luzzi’s public-facing writing has appeared in the New York Times, TLS, London Times, Los Angeles Times, American Scholar, Bookforum, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere, and his awards include a Dante Society of America Essay Prize, National Humanities Center Fellowship, and Wallace Fellowship at Villa I Tatti. In 2022 Joseph received a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award in support of his book project Brunelleschi’s Children: How a Renaissance Orphanage Saved 400,000 Lives and Reinvented Childhood.

Reviews

[Carin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have struggled with what to think of this book since I read it. I am still not sure what my final verdict is. Maybe writing this review will help me solidify things.

Joseph Luzzi's wife, Katherine, was killed in a car accident, but she was kept alive just long enough to deliver their daughter, Isabel. Joseph was devastated by this loss. I mean, completely unable to function in most ways. He is a professor at Bard College in New York, and he and Katherine had been living in a small town just north of the city. He moves back to his hometown in Rhode Island, to give over the care of Isabel to his mother and four older sisters.

He throws himself into work, commuting from two states away, writing an academic book. His family and friends are baffled by his ability to function so well on campus, but his utter inability to be a parent. And I was baffled too. I just wanted to shake him. He was so self-indulgent. He kept saying that he just couldn't function as a parent. But I disagree. If he hadn't had this safety net to fall back on, I think he'd have managed. As much as he praises his mother for her selflessness and her love for and care for his daughter, I think she was in some ways an enabler. Not to mention this meant that Isabel was being raised by a woman still steeped in the old ways of Calabria, a woman who had been merely fourteen when she had been married, and a woman still very much enmeshed in the machismo social structures of Italy. In addition, she fed Isabel garbage food and although Joseph said he wanted Isabel to eat organic food from Whole Foods, I'm not sure if he ever even told his mother this, and if so, he certainly didn't do anything when she refused. I was unimpressed with his excuses for Isabel's neglect. I totally get that Katherine's death was horrible, devastating, and threw him for a loop, but how long does he get to use that as an excuse? You can be depressed and in mourning and still feed your child decent food. If he could pull himself together enough to write an academic book, I say it's not that he didn't have the energy or wherewithal to parent properly, but he was misdirecting it. And what was more important, his career or his daughter? His choices were damning.

In fact, he only ever seems to pull out of his funk and start to operate like an adult again, when he meets the woman who is now his current wife. He claims that he started to function again and started to take over Isabel's rearing on his own, but from what I saw it seemed like it was only when he met Helena that he started to parent again. (His dating, by the way, also got a lot of his time and attention when Isabel was still being neglected at home. That also gives me serious pause regarding his "I was so depressed and couldn't function!" argument.) I got the feeling that he was a Mama's boy who really can't get along well without a woman in his life to take care of the details.

I will give him props for his brutal honesty. He certainly gives readers all the information so we can judge him harshly if we see fit. He may give excuses, but he doesn't obscure the facts.

I know I'm supposed to be impressed with his deep reading and the way he found solace in his critical appreciation of Dante's The Divine Comedy, but I thought it was too much and he took it too far. It started to feel a little like class. I did read the books back in college, but he gives you so much of them, that it's unnecessary: you will feel like you read them after this. The interpretation was completely accessible and not academic, and I liked it up to a point.

I guess what it boils down to for me is that this was a tragic story, very well told, but in the end, I just don't like Joseph as a person. And in a memoir that's hard to get over. It's one thing if he were ruining his own life (I've enjoyed those types of memoirs! I adore schadenfreude.) but to be screwing over his innocent infant daughter at the same time is hard to overlook. If wrenching honesty and beautiful writing are what you like in a memoir, this book is for you. (But not for me.)

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

In November 2007 Joseph Luzzi’s wife Katherine was in a fatal car accident; she had been eight and a half months’ pregnant, so within one day he entered “the wild uncharted terrain of being a single father and widower.” He was from a tight-knit family of Calabrian immigrants, and his mother and four sisters huddled in to raise Isabel at the family home in Rhode Island. However, this meant that for several years Luzzi was able to disengage from fatherhood, throwing himself into his work – teaching Italian at Bard College, editing the proofs for a forthcoming book – while others did the hard work of childrearing.

To his credit, Luzzi calls his own bluff and talks openly about the mistakes he made in the early years of fatherhood. He tried dating and played a lot of tennis, but mostly he delved deeper into Dante, his academic specialty. Like Dante, Luzzi obsessively asks himself how he can go on loving someone who no longer has a body. “Every grief story is indeed a love story,” but his memories of Katherine took on a more bittersweet tinge when the other driver involved in the car accident filed a lawsuit and Luzzi responded with a countersuit.

As Virgil was to Dante, Dante is to Luzzi: a guide through the hell of loss and into a vita nuova as he starts a new life with Isabel and, five years later, his second wife. “You may visit the Underworld, but you cannot live there,” Luzzi concludes. The biographical information about Dante can seem a little intrusive and some specialist interest in Italian literature and/or tennis would help you enjoy this memoir more, but I think anyone will appreciate the vivid picture of grief.

Related reading – a few recommended grief memoirs about the loss of a spouse:
• The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
• To Travel Hopefully by Christopher Rush
• Unremarried Widow by Artis Henderson

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should be nicer about a guy's book that's about grieving for his wife.

But really, the connection to Dante is tenuous at times (anyone from the Dante+Decameron group on Goodreads knows most of what he discusses about The Divine Comedy) and his actions towards his girlfriends (especially the woman that would become his new wife) verged on a little creepy. It's an inconsistent book that doesn't necessarily contain the nuances of other books on grieving like The Year of Magical Thinking.

[Raven Haired Girl]

“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 finds himself in utter chaos. He reveals himself in such an intimate manner. He’s honest in sharing his feelings towards the man who hit his wife and sues him. His feelings towards his family and how they differ from his Ivy League ways and lifestyle. His dating experiences, his yearning for another woman.

“Rilke once wrote that to love another person is our ultimate task, that for which all else is preparation.”

Plagued by guilt and mixed emotions as he leaves his infant daughter with family so he can do research and write in the attempt to stave off grief. The Divine Comedy helps him maneuver his way through the labyrinth of grief. He asks questions, seeks answers and bouts with existentialism. A man scratching and clawing with an unexpected and tragic sudden loss.

“I also asked him that day if he believed in the eternal life of the soul. I was now anguishing over this question to which I had never given a second thought before.”

“But if you believe in one deep, true love, common sense would also suggest that it would be difficult if not impossible to find another love of comparable intensity once your beloved is gone.”

An affecting story, those suffering a loss, experienced the powerful grip and depths of grief will relate to Joseph Luzzi’s powerful memoir.

“But I hope you’ll discover, as I have, that 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.”

For this and other reviews vist http://ravenhairedgirl.com

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know the memoir you're reading has fallen short when -- despite its unthinkably tragic subject -- it leaves you feeling cold. I should've felt extraordinary, complicated sympathy for Joseph Luzzi, who became "a widower and a father" on the very same day, but instead I found myself judging him -- and not at all unfairly, I don't think. I understand that people navigate grief and mourning in vastly different ways (including, at times, failing to navigate altogether). My problem with Luzzi is not that he ran from his responsibilities as a father, but that, even in retrospect, he never really acknowledges having done so. He leaves his almost-80-year-old mother to essentially raise his daughter while he throws himself into polishing his CV, playing tennis and amorous flings -- and he endlessly frames his selfish behavior as the rebuilding of his life. I'm sorry, but it never comes across as that to me: his life is rebuilt, yes, but incidentally -- his actions never seem like "rebuilding" (on the page, anyway), like a new construction of one's foundations. He is terrified of facing the haunted realities with which he's confronted. But he never frames it that way, never calls a spade a spade -- instead, it's this incessant habit of framing his running away as necessary for his healing (if I had a dollar for every time the tennis courts were referred to as a "refuge"), as though he means to convince himself that his cowardice (understandable cowardice, true, but cowardice all the same) were something other or more dignified than what it is. And the fact that he's always writing about others with scorn makes him seem less a man suffering a loss than, frankly, an asshole. When he writes that Match users "consider the daughter of a single parent 'baggage'," you're left wanting to answer him: "painting with an awfully wide brush, aren't we?" And I find his attitude toward his mother contemptible. Sometimes this attitude of exception manifests itself in very subtle ways ("Now a vibrant and hyperarticulate four, Isabel bore little resemblance to the little girl who clung to Nonnie's skirts like a lemur"). I see, so now that your daughter is under your refined auspices, she's "vibrant and hyperarticulate," whereas when she was being raised by your mother, she was an animal. And again, perhaps Luzzi doesn't intend a passage like this to be read as critical or contemptuous of his mother, but that is how it reads. Or how about when his mother, at his second wedding, tells him, after the speeches have been made: "I too wanted to talk." And then after musing on what his mother have said, he concludes: "My mother said none of these things because she was not one to sing her own praises." No, Mr. Luzzi, your mother said none of those things because you didn't ask her if she'd like to speak at your wedding. And you didn't ask her to speak at your wedding because you're embarrassed by her. Or how about when he gives in to his daughter's upset, and Helena, the violinist who will become his second wife, tells him: "You're such a Luzzi," using his mother's unaffected, working-class pronunciation of the Z -- the name of his mother, then, becoming an acceptable, teasing insult.

I found the book infuriating. For every brilliant insight Luzzi has into the particulars and shocks of grief (and there are many such insights, especially in the book's second chapter), there are a half-dozen moments when I felt like strangling him for his short-sightedness or his elitist contempt. Consider this passage: "I wanted to have my domestic cake, with Katherine as stay-at-home mom, and eat it too, with her also going out and earning some money in a job that wouldn't overly tax or distract her. Please, God, just let her earn $50,000 a year, I prayed, sometimes loud enough for Katherine to hear. I never imagined a life of financial hardship for us, not after all those years of study and sacrifice." Are you shitting me? I realize the cost of living in your neck of the woods is likely quite high, but you're a tenured university professor. Are you that out-of-touch with most of America, that you think the only people who'll be reading your book are from the Ivory Tower you inhabit? that you think writing about a combined household income of at least $150,000 a year can, in any universe, be described as "financial hardship"?

I should have loved this book. I, like Luzzi, come from a blue-collar family and was the first person in my family (including parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) to earn a Bachelor's degree -- and am still the only person in my family to have earned a Master's degree. I have an obsessive love of tennis. I've experienced unmooring grief and trauma in my own marriage. And I have a keen understanding of how literature can correct our wayward, storm-tossed courses.

But I just found Luzzi so unlikable as to make identification with him almost impossible.

I disclose that I received this book from the publisher.

[Haley Baumeister · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent way to follow up my read through The Divine Comedy (with the incredible 100 Days of Dante!)

The memoir storytelling was enjoyable. The ways it related to Dante often seemed like a stretch.

Kind of amazed someone can be a scholar of someone like Dante and be completely blind to the theological & spiritual implications of his work. Anyways, I was a bit put off by what seemed like selfishness in avoiding raising his daughter, masked as grief, while he makes time to sleep around with women he tried to date. Bro definitely missed some of the themes in The Divine Comedy he studied & taught. lol

[Crystal ✬ Lost in Storyland]

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.

[Stephanie Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sharon Chance · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely fell in awe of this memoir. Joseph Luzzi's style of writing pulls the reader into his dramatic and tragic story but leave you feeling uplifted and inspired at the conclusion.

I can't imagine the pain of losing a spouse - but Luzzi's comparison to the classic "The Divine Comedy" by Dante is the perfect way to describe the agony of loss and the gradual recovery process that brings you back to life, battered but still fighting the good fight!

If you've experienced loss, intense grief, and the battle of returning to a new normal, you will commiserate with this brilliantly written story. "In A Dark Wood" is, by far, one of the most intense and interesting books I've had the pleasure of reading this year. I highly recommend it.

[Sally Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In the middle of our life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood." These words from Dante's Divine Comedy are the theme of this book by Joseph Luzzi, who lost his young wife in a car accident. Luzzi is able to express the anguish and complexities of grief that others in a dark wood also feel but perhaps can't quite explain or verbalize. Luzzi is a professor whose specialty is Dante and therefore understands the intricacies of Dante's text. I had a much harder time with that, but could certainly relate to Luzzi's tale of sorrow and emergence from deep grief.

[Frank · Rating 1 out of 5]

This story is about a man's dealing with the loss of his wife. It has very little to do with Dante. Yes, he did get through his grief with the help of his knowledge of the Divine Comedy, but it's as though he used snippets from the Comedy, and not entire themes, to help him overcome his grief, to identify with Dante's life. And I often had to struggle to see the connection between what he wrote about his suffering and the snippets from the Comedy to which that aspect of suffering was related.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmm. . .I am not sure about this one. I wanted a book that would help me better appreciate Dante. A literature professor who knows a lot about Dante, uses the poet to help him navigate his own time of darkness following the death of his spouse.

This is OK, as far as that goes. But this was also a grief and healing memoir. I never thought of the Divine Comedy as a self-help volume, but why not? After all, Paradise Lost could go a long way as a management text, so it seems possible. The problem is that the expectation of the scholarly expertise that grants an insight into Dante’s poem beyond that open to the casual reader runs smack into the fact that academics are people too - weak and troubled people like the rest of us. So how to sort the insight of expert reading from the mess of chaotic lack of insight regarding ones own situation and personal crises? Physicians (and professors) go heal yourselves - just stop whining about your plight!

If one is unfamiliar with the Divine Comedy, this will seem a strange book. Dante, led by others (its a long story) goes on a journey through Hell, then through Purgatory, and then finally Heaven or Paradise. Along the way, there is much to learn about sinners and their sins and why they ended up where they did in Hell. This is the part of the poem that most people read and it is a lot of fun. The other two parts of the poem relate to how imperfect but salvageable people improve themselves for eventual entrance to paradise. Chronicling the failures of sinners and sorting out the struggles of the potentially salvageable is a tall order for anyone - but the poetry is fun throughout the book.

So how does this help one understand how to work through the stages of grief and rejoin the world? There is a simple approach that seems appropriate. The initial grief of losing a loved on its own terms is inconsolable and the grieved person is going through hell. Then the individual has to start reconnecting with the world and getting on with life. Finally, the individual learns to let it go and start a new life. OK, the linking with the three parts of Dante seems to fits and is easy enough to follow. It is a bit disconcerting to learn that the key to getting free from grief could come as easily from the movie Frozen as it could from the Divine Comedy (Let it Go!). Is the poem necessary here?

Professor Luzzi is detailed in chronicling his struggles over the course of recovering from his wife’s death. This must be an after-the-fact exercise, however, because if he realized what he was doing while he was doing it, one would want to reach out and shake him to get him to stop. If one is avoiding taking responsibility for raising a daughter, the solution is not sanctimonious navel gazing, but taking responsibility for raising a daughter. If the author continually angsts over his troubled relationship with his father, was it necessary that he seemed to try hard to generate a new “daddy problem” in his own daughter? More generally, if Professor Luzzi was learning from Dante during these years, he seemed to take his sweet time in showing it or in responding to grief differently based on his reflections. Perhaps the self-help version of Dante needs to be better formatted or even serialized to be punchier.

The role of different girlfriends and dates is fairly well done and they are treated as serious and even wise adults. Indeed, one could argue that Bach (Chaconne; Goldberg Variations) was also important, along with Dante, in bringing Professor Luzzi out of his dumps. (I do not say this to be snarky. There are recordings of the two Bach pieces on YouTube. Go listen to them.) The role of the grandmother is more complex and hard to summarize.

Finally, I have to ask - where were the academic politics during the course of the story? In his grief, the Professor shifts to a long distance commute to work, during which his colleague cover for him - for several years? When not on the road he is back at his family home. This certainly simplifies the story but was there nothing going on in the Languages and Literature Division during the course of all this? Perhaps, but is that really plausible?

All in all, the book was worth reading. For a rating, perhaps a 3.5 would be better than a 4 but I will stick with a 4 for now.

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and one half stars. Memoir about loss and grief. Luzzi lost his wife and became a widower with a newborn baby. His journey through grief is a study of Dante's own writings about death and grief.

[Aaron Crofut · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel bad giving this book a single star. Not because I am overly sympathetic with Luzzi, which I truly am not, but because this book was a gift from a talented student who picked it specifically because of a project on Dante I had her complete.

To ease my conscience, let me say that the high school student was far more perceptive in her understanding of Dante than the author was in this book.

Where to begin? I suppose we must begin somewhere, and so I shall start at the end. My end, that is, with this book. That's when a ten page ramble about tennis and McEnroe began. His account of the Red Sox miraculous 2004 run was almost enough to suck out the excitement of that event; I knew I wasn't doing ten full pages of tennis.

Wait, you say, this book is about Dante and grief, right? So why the Red Sox and Borg and McEnroe? Because the author likes them. Nothing to do with plumbing the depths of the human soul, but the man is so self-centered that he believes there is wisdom in these meanderings.

Do I feel bad that such a tragedy befell him? Yes. But there is an expectation that we soldier through without completely collapsing. Luzzi knows this, and goes so far as to say he put on the macho outer shell and that the real world couldn't see how wrecked he was.

Yes, they could.

Were there glimmers of hope? Sure, on the odd occasion he returned to Dante or Homer and discussed their understanding of tragedy, of virtue. But after one hundred pages of "I was a mess", I reached the point that I didn't care anymore.

At this point, I was ready to offer this my standard "three stars for the gift book out of charity" rating but then made the frightful mistake of seeing how the book ends. It ends with Luzzi, a professor who focuses on Dante, claiming FREAKING DANTE IN HIS FREAKING DIVINE COMEDY ends not with God but with love.

Oh, sorry. Capital Love. As in God. The Love that sets all into motion, Aristotle's Prime Mover.

The Comedy without God is a blood transfusion without blood. I haven't read it since my conversion, but even as a dedicated agnostic I recognized that Dante placed God at the center of literally everything in his tale.

So one star it is for that horrific misreading. On to Viktor Frankl, from whom I expect much more.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really was moved by this book. I intersect with it from several angles - I am learning Italian, I’m starting to read Dante in a bi-lingual edition and I’m grieving the loss of my husband. I think this book really speaks to people who have had a great loss, especially when they’ve lost the one great love of their life. His story is quite different than mine but it spoke to me about the many ways grief changes and the ways it remains. I particularly liked how he wove in and reflected Dante in his own journey through the dark woods. His story and insights inspire me to keep learning and being inspired by Dante’s work. I am still traversing dark woods but find Dante’s words a healing balm.

His story is very touching and he shares honestly about his vulnerable moments dealing with the tragic loss of his wife and the miracle of his daughter being saved. There were many beautiful passages but this one toward the end is worth sharing.

“It was the music’s joy within the sorrow that arrested me. It was irrational. Erotic. Passionate. Everything that deep and true love is. Everything that deep and true love remains, even after the person who inspires that love is no longer.” [p. 281 if the paperback version]

One of the central themes is the question of how does love take shape after the body that it loved is no longer present. I found his insights around this topic very profound and helpful to me personally.

I think it is a deep and painful and also beautiful story - written well with many layers. I think many people would really enjoy this book even if they don’t relate to having had a similar loss. I recommend it highly.

[Buried In Print]

Following Amazon's purchase of GoodReads, I no longer post my reviews here.

If you would like to read my thoughts on this book, you can view them in the following places:
BuriedInPrint
LeafMarks
BookLikes
LibraryThing

Posting these links does not constitute permission to duplicate these thoughts anywhere, including corporate-owned sites.

If you read/liked/clicked through to see this review here on GR, many thanks.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I was not who I feared I had become: a selfish careerist and calculating survivor, incapable of rising to the occasion and setting aside my own needs to raise my daughter." Unfortunately, that is exactly how he comes off in the book, as who he feared he had become. It's a little creepy, how he is unable to put his life back together for his daughter until he finds another woman--another wife--to replace the wife he lost.

[Gloria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive. Inconsistent. Underwhelming.

[Jeff Zell · Rating 5 out of 5]

On November 29, 2007 at 9:15am, Professor Luzzi's wife, Katherine Lynn Mester, pulled out of a gas station into oncoming traffic. The injuries sustained in that horrific accident led to her death a few hours later on the operating table. Miraculously, their daughter, still in the womb at eight and half months old, survived thanks to heroic medical treatment.

By noon of that day, Professor Luzzi became a first time father and a widower.

He was numb, shocked, and his grief was long and hard. Luzzi's mother, sisters, and brother stepped in to take care of daughter Isabel. After a brief leave of absence, Luzzi returned to teaching at Bard College. He and Isabel moved to the home in which Luzzi grew up in Rhode Island. He commuted to Bard, staying long enough each week to fulfill his teaching responsibilities.

Luzzi offers a deeply personal recounting of his grief. The structure of the journey is formed by Dante's Commedia.

Luzzi's engagement and connection with Dante's Commedia and his own journey is masterful. He shows us how an ancient text can come alive and inform a contemporary life. Dante himself writes during a time of significant crisis. He was exiled from his home in Florence, Italy simply because of the changing political tide. He is bereft of his home, friends, and the work he enjoys. While Dante does find suitable employment elsewhere, he can never truly go home. He has to find "home" somewhere else.

Luzzi is also working out where his true home is and what his role as Parent to Isabel shall be. He candidly explores his family dynamics, pros and cons, his own ambitions, and why he does not immediately become "Father" in the full sense of the word. It all has to do with him wandering emotionally and intellectually to find his true home.

Luzzi knew he was incomplete without Katherine. And, he wanted to love and be married again. He briefly recounts several failed relationships. In the final chapter, we are introduced to Helena. She and Luzzi eventually marry. Between his mother and Helena, he has his Beatrice who leads him out of widowhood.

Luzzi's story is compelling. While introducing us to Dante, his circumstances, friends, and writings, we are also learning about Luzzi's loss, grief, and the crucial role that friends and family play in his recovery. Luzzi is a blessed man. He is surrounded by a loving family, colleagues, and friends who choose to stand by him no matter what.

The majority of Dante translations in the book are Luzzi's. At the back of the book, Luzzi offers recommendations of translations as well as other books to further explore Dante. One of the translations I was surprised to see missing is Anthony Esolen's in the Modern Library Edition. But, alas, not everything can be listed in a book such as this.

[Kumari de Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir. I think it is the most honest memoir I ever read. Although many of the review on Amazon kind of slammed the author for being a bad dad, I think they missed the part where the author's wife is suddenly and violently killed in the first chapter. The author is not one to hide from his shortcomings, which were brought on grief. I'm not saying that makes his behavior "ok" in the moral sense, I'm saying I found it entirely understandable, and I'm glad he wrote a book about what really happened instead of one about what he wished had happened.

Admittedly the target market for this book may be a little narrow. If you never went to college or knew anyone immersed in the ivory tower you might not understand his obsession with his work. If you're not an immigrant you might not understand the tension between himself and his large, loving, supportive family. Lastly, if you have no interest in Dante, you might wonder why does this dude keep quoting the Comedia? These are all fair criticisms. But there is, deeper than all these surface level observations, a deeper universal truth about grief: it shocking, numbing, isolating, and does impair our judgement.

This book really resonated with me 1) because I loved the Inferno, (couldn't finish Paradiso, and never found a copy of Purgatory). 2)Because I could relate to the grief of a sudden and unexpected death of a relatively young person (my mother died when I was 20, from unknown causes not prefaced by illness.3) Because it reminded me of being in college after my mother's death, I could relate to his relationship to academia. I was studying the Italian Renaissance. If she hadn't died, I often wonder how much further I could have taken my studies. 4) Because I too am the daughter of first generation immigrants

It's not a book on how to grieve. it's not a book on understanding Dante. It's just a very personal reflection on this man's experience. I usually say I don't have to like the main character to enjoy a book, but in the case, you might have to - because that's all what the book is about, what happened to him.

[Len Rudner · Rating 2 out of 5]

On November 29, 2007, Katherine Luzzi, pregnant with her first child, was in a serious automobile collision. She died a few hours later, but the doctors were able to save her child. What follows is the story of how her grieving husband, a professor of Italian used Dante’s Divine Comedy to work through grief and mourning, to find a new life for himself and his daughter Isabel and to rediscover his capacity for love. Using the framework of Dante’s epic poem, Luzzi describes his own movement from hell through purgatory, and finally to paradise. It is a divine comedy, not because there is anything funny about it, but because, using Aristotle’s definition, things work out in the end.

This is the sort of book that makes you feel terrible for not liking it. All the ingredients are laid out for a great reader experience, and yet, for me anyway, things do not work out in the end.

I found Luzzi to be … unlikeable. Part of this is due to the way in which he abdicated responsibility for his daughter, but a larger part is due to the barest sketching of his wife. This is, after all, a story of how he was devastated by his loss, but after almost 300 pages, I felt that I knew next to nothing about her. The grieving husband owes me nothing, but the author owes his reader ... something.

In general, I thought the book was intellectually interesting (I’m moved to dig out my old copy of Dante and refresh my memory ) but emotionally cold. In fact, the words on the page only come to life after 200 pages, where Luzzi tells his mother’s story. Yolanda’s life, as a young girl, a good wife, and a devoted mother, made me understand, feelingly, the role that she played in saving her son from his grief. Yolanda is drawn with a level of detail that Katherine did not receive.

Perhaps this is simply how the author processed his very personal tragedy. But not all journeys make for good books.

[Amy Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Luzzi unterrichtet am Bard-College in New York. Er ist ein Italo-Amerikaner, seinen Ursprung hat er in Kalabrien. Er beschäftigt sich seit Jahrzehnten mit der Literatur und Kultur Italiens, zu deren frühen Dichtern eben auch Dante gehört.

Sein Roman "In einem dunklen Walde unterscheidet sich jedoch literatisch von seinen petischen Vorbildern, er schreibt in seiner Geschichte eher Prosa, also in einer ungebundenen Sprache, wie wir sie von aktuellen Romanen kennen.

Die Kernaussage von Joseph Luzzi besagt, dass Geschichten heilen können, wenn sie zur rechten Zeit an den richtigen Menschen geraten. Das kann ich nur bestätigen, auch ich habe mich oft in Bücher geflüchtet, die mir Mut gemacht oder mich getröstet haben.

Der Schreibstil ist zwar ohne Form, aber trotzdem sehr poetisch und tiefsinnig, das ist keine Erzählung, die man mal eben so weg lest, für die Geschichte muss man sich Zeit nehmen, denn oft gerät man ins Grübeln und muss Joseph Luzzi recht geben. Ich kann mich noch gut daran erinnern, dass mir bei seiner Trauer und den Vergleich mit Dantes Werken oft das Herz weh getan hat weil die Texte so eindringlich geschrieben sind, dass man unweigerlich mitleidet.

Seine Erzählungen über seine Frau Katherin wechseln sich ab mit Vergleichen zu Dantes Werken. Insbesondere Dantes Vorstellungen der Liebe werden oft thematisiert. Sein Werk ist eine Mischung aus Selbstüberprüfung und Interpretation von Dante. Joseph Luzzi thematisiert den Verlust seiner Frau sehr häufig, was mir sehr gut gefallen hat, weil das Thema in unserer Gesellschaft viel zu wenig Anklang findet.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars) This work is a memoir of a man coming to grips with the worst of tragedies in a very candid and personal way. After losing his pregnant wife in a horrific accident, this Italian literature professor has to face the prospect of life without his beautiful wife to help raise a daughter who was recovered in time. In his grief and adrift-ness, he turns to Dante and his travels through the Divine Comedy to try to make sense of his processing his grief and attempts to find his way through life. It is not quite a perfect match with the travels of Dante, but it helps him process the challenges of moving forward. Still, it can be hard to imagine.

He doesn’t seem to take responsibility for raising his daughter until she gets older and he attempts to rebuild a life. Yet, the challenge is to try to place yourself in his shoes. Could you do any differently than Luzzi? It was interesting that he doesn’t take the metaphor of the Divine Comedy to explain the role of his second wife. Perhaps it would be too obvious to make her into a Beatrice, but it isn’t quite that simple. Still, going through the phases of grief in the context of Dante’s life and travels through the Divine Comedy is useful. Still, much like the work, he uses more from the Inferno than Paradiso in his work.

Overall, this was an interesting and insightful read. I think a reader would need to be in the right mood for this work to resonate more, but it is a personal, intimate work that incorporates tools help one man navigate grief, and maybe that is the biggest takeaway. If there is something you can tie to a personal situation, it can maybe help explain and help the difficult healing process.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up this book because I'm heading to Italy and I've thought about reading Dante's Comedy. I remember reading about Joseph Luzzi's book. "In a dark wood.. So begins one of the most celebrated and challenging poems ever written, Dante's Divine Comedy, a fourteen-thousand-line epic about the soul's journey through the afterlife." For Joseph Luzzi, a Dante scholar and professor at Bard College, Dante helps him to work out his grief when his wife, Katherine, 8 1/2 months pregnant, is killed in a horrible car accident. Their child, Isabel, born prematurely, lives. In his memoir, he writes about his love and loss and faith and hope and joy, Dante's love and loss, and his mother/father/sisters, specifically his mother (she was born in Italy, specifically Calabria) and how they take care of Isabel in her early years of life. I thought of D.H., a friend whose wife recently died. It's not a self-help book. But a story of one person struggling over his wife's death and the future for himself and his young daughter. "I now understood that every grief story is indeed a love story--it was love that had landed me in the dark wood to begin with, and only love could lead me out." (p.288) And, in small ways, we learn a bit about Dante's Comedy (happy ending) (also about Virgil and Beatrice) to inspire us to read it on it's own.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe another half a star--there were parts of this book that I found really gripping; but there were too many that left me cold. I agree with other Goodreads reviewers that Luzzi's personal confessions never really resonated, and some of his relationships with (read: uses of) women were fairly creepy. I think he may have been aiming at self-deprecation, but it didn't really work. One of his obsessions is that Dante needs to be rediscovered and even reinvented by each generation of readers, and this book is his attempt to relate his life experiences to the Divine Comedy.

I felt Dante's words on intellectual and emotional levels, but his absolute faith in Christian doctrine belonged to an order of experience far removed from my secular world. I could think and feel with Dante in hell and purgatory--but I didn't know if I could believe with him in heaven.

I imagine a lot of modern readers share exactly this intellectual position, and there are many parts of this book that will appeal to them. But the attempts to find mirrors of his life experience in the Divine Comedy often seem tenuous, even if his summaries of various scenes in the Comedy are wonderfully clear and poignant.

[Nell · Rating 3 out of 5]

More often than not, I read in a headlong fashion, to find out what’s going to happen. Luzzi shows what deep familiarity with a great work of literature—in Dante’s words, “long study and great love”—can offer a reader about living one’s own life. In Luzzi’s case, Dante’s Divine Comedy helped him work through the sudden death of his pregnant wife and the premature birth of their daughter; the relationship with his home town, family, and culture; and where he belonged in his own life, his “village,” and how to live a life of meaning.

Some readers’ criticism of this book is that Luzzi, while unmoored by the tragedy, self-indulgently leaves the care of his newborn to his mother and sisters for three years while he resumes teaching and writing, distracts himself playing tennis (descriptions of which there are too many, for this non-player), and eventually looking for a new love. He does take himself to task for these. His relinquishing care of his daughter is part of what led him to a greater understanding of his southern Italian family and culture. Lacking his cultural and scholarly background, not to mention his gender and personality, I probably would have viewed my options through a different lens. Still, it’s not for me to judge.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I saw Professor Luzzi deliver a lecture on Botticelli and Renaissance Florence, which is how I became interested in his work. He intersperses his personal memoir of loss and healing with textual analysis of Dante's Divine Comedy, a text he knows by heart, having studied and taught it for decades. It is moving, fascinating, and revolting by turns. There were moments I felt bored by his repetition of the same thoughts and events, and many moments when I felt impatient with his inability to be there for others in his personal life. He expected women to simply step up and serve him -and he confesses it without any sense of shame! Likewise, his confessions of self-pity and immaturity might have been balanced by personal growth, but all that happens is he finds another beautiful, accomplished woman to replace the one he lost at the beginning. Like many men, single or married, he did not show up for his child's infancy or babyhood, only taking her to be with him when he's got another woman to take care of her. Even then, his Calabrian mama is with him and his daughter until he has safely installed another woman. Pretty disgusting. Another handsome guy who thinks his brilliance, position, and good looks will save him from his character defects.

[Pranjal Awasthi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In "In a Dark Wood" by Joseph Luzzi, the author narrates his journey of coming to terms with his wife's untimely death in a car accident. While struggling to cope with his grief, Luzzi turns to Dante's "Divine Comedy" for solace and finds parallels between his own life and Dante's journey through the underworld.

I absolutely loved the book. The themes of grief, love, breakups, and single parenthood are all so relatable, and Luzzi's writing is sincere and heartfelt. His integration of Dante's lessons for the modern reader coping with grief adds another layer of depth to the story. It was truly a captivating read that had me hooked from the beginning.

Overall, "In a Dark Wood" is a poignant and moving memoir that showcases the power of literature in helping us cope with life's challenges. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves memoirs or is going through a difficult time. With its relatable themes and profound insights, it is a great read that I would rate 5/5.

[Emma Sotillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself in the pages of this memoir more than once, the passage closest to my heart being the moment when the author retells a paragraph from his previous book My Two Italies.
"[My mother] told me that in Italy [my father] had been a different person, capable of great joy and spontaneity-- everything but the tortured, autocratic, and difficult person I had known from my childhood [...] He had left everything he knew and loved in Italy to build a life for his family in America"
A very nostalgic description of what being uprooted means.
I hope one day my daughter can hear from her nonna what a different person I was before the exile.
Thank you, Professor Luzzi, I appreciate your book.

[Liz V · Rating 4 out of 5]

I get why some reviews find Luzzi's delving into Dante perhaps overwhelming or distracting, but as a Dante fan I see a great deal of value in this back and forth on his part. It's as if he creates the circles of hell and reaching paradise through this interplay of personal and poetic. He says himself in the book he's no modern-day Dante and that he translates himself and that these realizations underscore his grief. I think he manages that well. I'd say my main criticism of the writing is that in places he's repetitive of details. His epiphany, though, regarding grief and love tied together is inspiring, as are many of his realizations along the way.