What a truly fascinating way to begin Canto. "I must make verses of new punishment and offer matter now for Canto Twenty of this first canticle of the submerged."
It as though the unrelenting grimness and gloom forced our author out of the poem, and perhaps with a tinge of irony, to come up for air as he submerges. Further into the canto, after he described the sinners being submerged and contorted to the point where they must "walk backward because they could not see ahead of them", Dante again directly addresses the reader, saying "May God so let you, reader gather fruit form what you have read, and now think for yourself how could i ever keep my own face dry." Remarkable, in that in engages the real struggle that Dante demonstrates in contain his own emotion and pity for hte unfortunates. But also, the sympathy is immediately tossed aside by his guide virgil, reminding Dante and thus the reader that hey, these folks here have lived truly terrible lives and their suffering is a deserved punishment for their crimes. The unceasing barrage of images is enough to make even the most rigid of readers feel a tinge of sympathy, especially this far into the narrative. It's like some version of the stockholm syndrome, and Virgil acts as an important clarifier that this journey is meant to humanize those already lost, but to serve as a stern warning to the living that one must live a better life, lest you end up suffering as these souls suffer. Each soul had their chance while living to act on God's grace, and each in their own way rejected his love. God is not a passive presence in our lives, Virgil reminds. He exerts his love to anyone willing to listen. That voice in the back of your head telling you that what you are about to do is wrong? That's God. The guidebook clearly stating what is right and what is sin? The Bible. Virgil reminds Dante of this by listing men who actively turned away from God. Amphiarius, who foresaw in own death by jumping into an abyss, and yet retreated in battle anyway. Mantos the soothsayer who saw his own father's death and did nothign about it. These acts of hubris illuminate to Dante and the reader that to sin is to choose to sin. Free will is a gift, not one to be taken lightly.
