Casella: Ante-Purgatory, Purgatorio 2   A dear friend of Dante, Casella was a singer and composer from Florence (or perhaps the nearby town of Pistoia). He set lyric poems to music and performed these arrangements, as he does here on the shores of Purgatory with Dante's canzone, "Love that speaks within my mind" (2.112).     "Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona" (2.112)   Casella died sometime before Easter Sunday 1300 (when Dante arrives in Purgatory) and after July 13, 1282, the date of a document from Siena reporting that he was fined for wandering about the city at night. Casella's own arrival now, after having previously been refused passage to Purgatory, is a result of the plenary indulgence granted by Pope Boniface VIII on Christmas 1299 for the Jubilee year (1300). He smiles, showing both affection and bemusement, when Dante tries futilely to embrace his soul-body (2.76-84), a scene recalling how Aeneas sought to clasp the shade of his father, Anchises, in the underworld of Virgil's Aeneid (6.700-2).