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

Luzzi (My Two Italies), a professor of Italian at Bard College, plunges into a familiar classic he had often taught and studied—Dante’s Divine Comedy—that suddenly took on a heartbreaking new resonance after the death of his young wife. In November 2007, Luzzi was in his late 30s, living in Tivoli, N.Y., with Katherine, who was nine months pregnant. He felt he was finally on his way professionally and personally when tragedy struck. A car accident took Katherine’s life, yet the baby she carried survived; within a few hours Luzzi found himself both a widower and a new father to a daughter, Isabel. In a narrative that would seem contrived coming from someone less immersed in the language of Dante, Luzzi attests that reading the exiled 14th-century Florentine author at this crucial juncture “gave me the language to understand my own profound sense of displacement.” Like Dante’s epic poem, Luzzi’s narrative moves structurally through the stages of the Underworld, from Hell into Paradise; instead of having Virgil as his guide, Luzzi enlisted his family, namely his old-world mother, Yolanda, to care for Isabel. Yolanda’s help was a godsend but also at times got in the way of his emotional connection with his new daughter. Naturally, Katherine serves as his own Beatrice. Luzzi honestly grapples with profound questions about being a man and father in this very literary and very personal work. (May)