The liver is the largest internal organ in the body. Dark and heavy with blood, it was often viewed as the seat of the soul, the source of passion, a tool to predict the future, or a symbol of suffering and resilience. In Greek mythology, Prometheus is bound to a rock for stealing fire from the gods and endures the eternal torment of having his liver devoured daily by an eagle, only to have it regenerate each night. Clay models of sheep livers found in archaeological sites highlight the organ’s pivotal role in religious and political decision-making. The Mesopotamians believed the liver was the seat of the soul. Their language reflected this belief, with the same word often used for both “liver” and “mood.” In the Akkadian language, the term for liver, kabattu, was synonymous with “heavy” or “weighty,” signifying its importance as the center of gravity for one’s being and emotions.
The classical world disseminated these ideas to its constituents. Plato defined the rational soul as in the head and relegated the “appetitive soul” as the seat of passions and desires to the liver. He imagined the latter as a smooth, bright mirror that could reflect the thoughts of the mind, becoming enraged and swollen with bitterness or calmed into a gentle sweetness. The Greeks also linked the liver to the four humors, associating it with choler (from the Greek kholē, or bile), the substance that produced a fiery, passionate, and sometimes angry temperament. Hippocrates and later Galen further developed the humors, believing the liver to produce blood and regulate the balance of vital fluids. An imbalance in the liver’s functioning would lead to excessive choler or melancholy.
The Etruscans and Romans also linked the liver to anger, passion, and melancholia. The haruspex, a priestly diviner, would meticulously inspect the organ’s features when taken from a sacrificed animal, as well as its size, color, texture, and markings on its lobes. Each region corresponded to a different deity or aspect of the cosmos. A healthy, well-formed liver signaled divine favor, but blemishes or abnormalities were dire omens. The most remarkable artifact of this practice is the Liver of Piacenza, a 3rd-century BCE bronze model of a sheep’s liver discovered in Italy. Its surface is intricately divided into sections, each inscribed with the names of an Etruscan god, serving as a divine map and a training manual for priests to interpret the will of the heavens as written upon the viscera.
In traditional Chinese medicine and literature, the liver governs emotion and is associated with anger and frustration. Chinese poetry often references liver qi (energy) about emotional states. Middle Eastern cultures often viewed the liver as the seat of courage and honor, themes that appear throughout Arabic literature and poetry. Jewish dietary laws (kashrut) attributed special cultural significance to the liver. The Hebrew word for liver, kaved, shares a root with the word for “heavy” or “glory,” and it is often invoked to express the most profound emotional states. The prophet Jeremiah, in the Book of Lamentations, cries out in grief over the destruction of Jerusalem, “My liver is poured upon the earth,” a visceral and powerful metaphor for unbearable sorrow that a modern “broken heart” often fails to capture in literature fully.
In medieval literature the phrase “lily-livered,” meaning cowardly, derives from the medieval belief that a lack of blood in the liver indicates cowardice. Shakespeare employed this symbolism effectively, with characters in The Tempest and Henry V using liver-related imagery to question courage and masculine virtue. In poetry, the liver has occasionally surfaced as a symbol of emotion, pain, or vitality. John Donne referenced the liver in relation to love and suffering. In “The Ecstasy,” he refers to the “liver and all,” expressing how deeply the soul and body intertwine. The liver, in this metaphysical context, represents the bodily seat of emotional intensity and desire. Medieval and Renaissance writers often located intense emotions in the liver rather than in the heart. In Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the liver becomes a site of internal conflict and moral struggle, and various works from the period describe love as “burning the liver” or “inflaming the liver.”
In modern literature, Charles Baudelaire used imagery of a diseased spleen and a bitter liver to explore feelings of ennui and urban decay. The liver, with its associations of detoxification and bile, becomes a metaphor for processing bitterness and anger. In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the protagonist Jake Barnes, reflecting on his war injuries and altered masculinity, often drinks heavily—a motif that indirectly highlights the liver’s biological role in processing toxins. Here, the liver becomes an unstated casualty of existential despair and postwar trauma. In William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch and other works from the Beat Generation, the liver is again metaphorically implicated—this time as a target of addiction and degeneration.
Contemporary literature has expanded the liver’s symbolic repertoire to include themes of mortality, disease, and social commentary. The rise of alcoholism as a social issue brought new literary attention to liver disease and its metaphorical possibilities. Stories of liver donation and transplantation have become powerful metaphors for rebirth, second chances, and human connection. The idea that someone can give life through liver donation has inspired works exploring sacrifice, generosity, and the interconnectedness of human experience. Environmental literature has also embraced the liver as a symbol of the earth’s ability to process and filter toxins, environmental resilience, and consequences of pollution.
Though the liver does not possess the romantic cachet of the heart or the intellectual prestige of the brain, its presence in culture, poetry, and literature is both enduring and profound. From ancient myths of punishment to modern narratives of medical miracles, the liver continues to serve writers as a powerful symbol for human experience—encompassing suffering, renewal, courage, toxicity, and purification.