Words Per Mile

In Canto 7 going into 8, Dante and Virgil visit the fifth circle of Hell, which holds the wrathful and sullen. Because those here were angry in life, they’re now trapped in sorrow forever, to regret not appreciating life and the sun while they could. This is reflected in the opening lines of the song:

You only feel it when it’s list

Getting through still has a cost

Quietly, it slips through your fingers, love

Falling from you drop by drop

Other lyrics suggest similar violence, darkness, and the connection between the two, including one of my favorite moments on the album: “Or Christ, hold me like a knife.”

In an interview, Hozier talks about how we “act out our traumas against other people,” and how this creates further traumas that we “enact into the world while carving through the dark” (see the phrases “carving through the dark” and the aforementioned likening of the self to a knife). The song talks about these behaviors and cycles of violence as inherent to human nature—it is, in the end, who we are.

Much of the phrasing in Who We Are also again evokes images of water—at the end of the 8^th canto, Dante and Virgil are guided across the river Styx by Phlegyas. After this, Dante’s writing style changes and becomes more loquacious, with three or more cantos sometimes being devoted to one circle of Hell. This is also where we need to change out our record.

See you next time!