In A Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love
Written by Joseph Luzzi
Narrated by Rick Adamson
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
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.
Joseph Luzzi
Joseph Luzzi is Associate Professor of Italian and Director of Italian Studies at Bard College, USA, and the author of Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy (2008), which received the MLA's Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies and was named an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice (2009).
More audiobooks from Joseph Luzzi
A Grand Tour of Italy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings8 Books That Changed the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The President's Book Club: What Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR Read for Guidance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Reading Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Power of Literature in a Time of Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blessed Lens: A History of Italian Cinema Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to In A Dark Wood
Related audiobooks
Deciphering Dante’s Divine Comedy: Love, Redemption, and Our Human Condition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mystery Cults in the Ancient World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDante Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Dante and His Divine Comedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Life of My Own: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Modern Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mystery of Charles Dickens Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-changing Wisdom of History's Greatest Poem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Turning to God: How You Can Pray Like a Jesuit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Narrative Spirituality of Dante's Divine Comedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5William Blake vs the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Letters of Abelard and Heloise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dawn of Political History: Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Life as a Russian Novel: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Essential T.S. Eliot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThomas Hardy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Augustine: Conversions to Confessions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Travels with Epicurus: A Journey to a Greek Island In Search of a Fulfilled Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thomas Merton on William Faulkner Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thinking Again: A Diary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing to Be Frightened Of Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Decameron Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reflections on Herman Melville's Moby Dick Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hero's Way: Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Personal Memoirs For You
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals Presents: Good Girl: Notes on Dog Rescue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Down the Drain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Own It All: How to Stop Waiting for Change and Start Creating It. Because Your Life Belongs to You. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If You Would Have Told Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taste: My Life Through Food Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for In A Dark Wood
12 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rather an odd book - I was unable to summon up any empathy at all for the principal character, though the strength of the story was sufficient to keep me reading to the end. Not up to Amanda Craig's best, but still worth reading.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Books teach us many things. The best books and stories reflect the human condition, helping us understand how to face any number of situations we encounter in our lives. They show us what is possible, both good and bad. And although we may hope to never feel the need to look to certain works for guidance, they are still available to us if we need them. To read books is to live many lives, some truly and some vicariously. But what happens when you are forced to lead a life you didn't want and didn't choose, one that threatened to pull you under? When Dante scholar and professor Joseph Luzzi loses his wife in a car accident the same day his daughter is born, he is thrust into a life he doesn't want to lead, lost and wandering without any map. His memoir, In a Dark Wood, recounts the years he spent learning to find his way out of grief and mourning, finally learning to be a father and to love again, thanks to close a close reading of Dante's Divine Comedy. Luzzi's wife Katherine was eight and a half months pregnant when she was hit and killed in an automobile accident. Although doctors could not save her life, they could save the baby, delivering tiny Isabel by emergency caesarean. Luzzi had been looking forward to becoming a father, despite the fact that his own father did not give him a model he wanted to follow in his own parenting. But when he loses Katherine, he is too overcome with grief to take care of Isabel, giving her over to the care of his old-world Calabrian mother and sisters, plunging himself into work to distract himself from the pain of loss. Luckily his work is on Dante, author of one of history's most famous lost love's laments and ultimately a guide to helping Luzzi come to terms with his unwanted and unlooked for vita nuova (new life). The deeply personal memoir of loss, grief, and longing is intricately intertwined with Luzzi's literary exploration of Dante, especially as Dante's loss of his beloved Beatrice mirrored Luzzi's own journey through his loss of Katherine and the exile he feels from his own life. Dante's journey through the underworld, purgatory, and ultimately into paradise, is mirrored by Luzzi's years of struggle to come out the other side of his own dark wood of deep and paralyzing grief. He looked to Dante to help him understand how it is possible to still love someone who has become incorporeal, gone from this world forever. Luzzi finds some solace in the parallels he finds in Dante but the book cannot show him how to be a father. From the very beginning, he has an inability to connect with Isabel because of being emotionally frozen to protect against the overwhelming agony that his wife's death carries for him. And in Katherine's absence as Isabel's flesh and blood mother, Luzzi does not know how he should father this baby, this toddler, this child either. As he addresses his own despair, he pulls directly from Dante's writing and life experiences, weaving the literary and the personal tightly together. His own life is an illustration of Dante's journey. Or perhaps Dante's journey is an illustration of Luzzi's life. His writing about his own life is raw but the literary analysis, while reinforcing the shared experience, helps make the emotion a little less overwhelming to the reader. Luzzi spares nothing in opening up about his loneliness and his floundering as a father. He is honest about the failures at moving on in his life, wanting to replicate the family that was forever lost with Katherine's death, one that truly perhaps never quite existed in the first place. But Dante doesn't just teach him about death, pushing him to the purgatory of healing and the paradise of love as well. As Luzzi says, "every grief story is a love story" and this is certainly that. It's a wrenching tale skillfully told, literate and accessible both.