Read it through once

The dramatic quality of Dante's work is the first point to be made clear. He is not primarily a systematic thinker; he is a poet whose thought is always expressed in action. The narrative in the "Commedia" is not merely an occasion for the exposition of ethical and theological doctrines; the ethical and theological doctrines are shown in their effect upon the sentiments and will of the man who is the hero of the poem. Dante's characters are not abstractions embodied, they are impulses and affections in action; and for this reason, because those affections are real and not merely logical consequences, Dante's world is lived in and lived through, and the reader is carried along by a momentum which is not that of dialectic but of passion and of pity.