Hozier and the Sublime

 by Anya Shankar

Hozier (image source: By Sniper BruceDog)

The reason why Hozier is one of my favourite artists of all time is his lyricism, the way he can write the most painful, thoughtful and emotional lyrics over and over again and they never lose meaning. A lot of his work draws from folk, soul, and blues, often using religious themes. His lyrics are heavy with vivid literary images and his focus on love and nature remind me a lot of Romantic poetry. When you really listen to his lyrics, it's easy to make that connection. Romanticism was an artistic movement encompassing literature, art music and architecture over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romantic literature particularly focuses on the celebration of nature and aesthetic beauty, sometimes even characterising nature. Romanticism embraces feelings of isolation and concentrates on the individual experience and the interior world of feeling. 

Another theme of Hozier’s music is the idea of the Sublime, which is central to a Romantic’s perception of the world. The sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. Romantics focus on how this greatness can be found within nature. The term especially refers to use of description and language to create and excite an experience that takes us beyond ordinary experience and ourselves. The Sublime asserts that ideas of pain are much more powerful than those of pleasure, and that the strongest pain of all is the fear of death, which causes terror. If the Sublime is one’s strongest passion, it is grounded in terror. Yet it is not an unpleasant emotion, for sometimes danger or pain can give us delight by the euphoria we have when we learn to pass through it. 

Hozier’s Work song is a perfect example of Romanticism, a song in which even death, inescapable mortality, and nature cannot keep him apart from his lover, whose love and connection transcends what we know of mortality. The focus on nature, ‘Lay me gently in the cold dark earth’ and passionate love, ‘No grave can hold my body down / I'll crawl home to her’ exemplifies his Romantic narrative voice. His Work song and From Eden can both be compared with John Keats’ Lamia. Lamia, in Greek mythology, was a beautiful Libyan queen, loved by Zeus. She incurred the wrath of a merciless Hera who killed every child Lamia had, or made Lamia kill it herself. Lamia was driven to insanity and morphed into a malevolent monster, stealing babies from their mothers to kill them. Keats’ Lamia offers an evocative retelling of the myth in which Lamia is a beautiful serpent who is turned into an even more beautiful woman by Hermes. 

Keats’ vivid description of serpent Lamia is perfect evidence of how he uses imagery to paint a picture to the reader: And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, / Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed / Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries. Lamia meets a young man called Lycius who falls violently in love with her as soon as he sees her, ‘And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up, / Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup’. Keats describes how Lycius ‘Swoon'd, murmuring of love, and pale with pain.’ Lycius’ love is so powerful that it physically pains him. Keats portrays love as something that has so much power over us and how we cannot control it, rather it controls us. For when we are in love, all rational thoughts are grossly overpowered by irrational emotion. 

At the wedding of Lamia and Lycius, philosopher Apollonius arrives uninvited. Lamia’s only condition for the wedding was that he would not be invited. Apollonius starts to stare fixedly at Lamia as she grows increasingly pale and silent, ‘now no azure vein / Wander'd on fair-spaced temples; no soft bloom / Misted the cheek’. Apollonius shouts ‘A serpent!’ and Lamia vanishes, ‘Lycius' arms were empty of delight,’. At the moment of her disappearance, Lycius dies. Lamia seems to suggest that passionate love is an illusion and an enchantment, ultimately destructive. Keats knew that desire must be curbed by restraint, that love must harmonise with, and be a part of life, rather than dominate and control it. Therefore, Lamia can be regarded as a warning against the all-absorbing nature of illusory, passionate love. Lamia and Work Song are similar in the way that death is not seen as a barrier to stop what seems to be an innate love and the way that one cannot live without the other. 

Most of Hozier’s lyrics glorify love, he makes romance seem like one of the most important and wonderful experiences, unlike Lamia. In Jackie and Wilson, he even alludes that love has saved him: ‘No other version of me I would rather be tonight / And Lord, she found me just in time’. He also acknowledges that love isn't easy in Someone New: ‘Would things be easier if there was a right way? / Honey there is no right way’. Hozier’s Romantic perspective is illuminated in this song, he explains that every day he falls in love a little bit more with someone new. There is merit in finding the beauty of every day and the people you meet along the way.