Casella

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Casella is a soul whom Dante meets at the beginning of the journey through Purgatory, on the shore where the souls wait to be taken on board by the angel helmsman. Dante recognizes him by his sweet voice, goes to meet him, and begs him to pause a little. Casella replies that he will stop to satisfy his friend's request, declaring that he now loves him, freed from the mortal body, with the same intensity with which he loved him in life. In answer to Dante's question about why so much time has been taken from him, Casella explains that the angel who gathers the souls has many times refused to let him embark, according to a will that is just but inscrutable; only at that moment, as he himself approached the shore, was he received. The authorized note further indicates that Casella's delay is linked to the poetic need to place an artist friend on that shore, and that a veil of mystery, not entirely clarified, remains around his lingering.