Read it through once

Dante's art is intimately connected with his own life. He never completely escapes from his personality; his characters are often masks of himself, and yet they are not mere masks. The complexity of his vision arises from his capacity to identify himself with many points of view. He can be stern and pitiless; he can be tender and humane; he can be the judge and the sorrowing friend. The multiple tones of the "Commedia" give it the authority of experience; and they ask of the reader a corresponding capacity for sympathy and judgment.