Songfacts®:

• Released as part of Unreal Unearth: Unending, Hozier's third revisitation of his Unreal Unearth album, "Hymn to Virgil" is a brooding, poetic rumination on Dante's Inferno.
• To set the stage, Inferno is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century masterwork Divine Comedy, an ambitious three-part journey mapping the soul's route to divine understanding. It begins with a harrowing descent through nine concentric circles of Hell, escalates to the penitential climb of Purgatory, and ultimately ascends to heavenly bliss. Along this harrowing tour of sins and punishments, Dante is led by Virgil, the Roman poet representing reason and wisdom, who ultimately must bid farewell before reaching Paradise because of his pagan origins.
  
  "Hymn to Virgil" is less about divine progression and more about human connection. In Hozier's version, Dante refuses to part with his companion, choosing solidarity over salvation. Dante's tale is transformed into a meditation on loyalty, connection, and the burdens we carry for those who guide us. "How could you leave behind someone who carried you through the depths of despair?" Hozier mused in a 2023 interview.
• The song was born out of the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic when Hozier, like many of us, was grappling with existential dread. Inspired by Dante's nine circles of Hell, he envisioned Unreal Unearth as a musical parallel to that journey, a way of emerging on the other side of the darkness.
  
  "Hymn to Virgil" was one of the earliest tracks he tackled, crafted in 2020 in Wicklow, Ireland. By the time he finished, he admitted to Rolling Stone, "I felt like I'd carried it so long and walked such a winding path."
• The process to create this song was anything but straightforward. Hozier initially produced and mixed it before teaming up with Jeff Gitty and Dan "Beon" Tannenbaum. Even then, he remained riddled with doubt. Would people connect with the overt Dante references? Was the song veering too close to "musical theater"? And, of course, there was the eternal musician's worry: had he overworked it, losing sight of the original spark?
  
  Reflecting on his reservations, he told Rolling Stone, "It's nearly that I've been around it for so long that the way my ears hear it now are very different from how other people's ears will hear it."
  
  Despite these initial doubts, "Hymn to Virgil" was eventually released as part of Unreal Unearth: Unending on December 6, 2024.