Prologue

      Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.

      In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself 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. The tension between the pronouns says it all: although the “I” belongs to Dante, who died in 1321, his journey is also part of “our life.” We will all find ourselves in a dark wood one day, the lines suggest.

      For me that day came eight years ago, on November 29, 2007, a morning just like any other. I left my home in upstate New York at eight thirty a.m. and drove to nearby Bard College, where I am a professor of Italian. It was cold and wet, the air barely creased by the gray light. After my first class ended, I walked to my office to gather materials and then made my way to a ten thirty a.m. class.

      I was joking with my students as we all settled in, when I noticed something unusual out of the corner of my eye: there was a security guard standing at the door.

      “Look, they’re coming to arrest me,” I said, laughing. But the beefy security guard was not smiling.

      “Are you Professor Luzzi?”

      I’ve done nothing wrong, was my first thought.

      “Yes—why?”

      “Please come with me.”

      I edged outside the classroom and saw the associate dean and vice president of the college racing up the stairwell. I started running too, down the stairs and out of the building. There was a security van waiting for me.

      Joe, your wife’s had a terrible accident.

      The words came from somewhere close, but they sounded muffled, as though passing through dimensions. Time and space