The subject of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s Der Tod des Empedokles (The Death of Empedocles, 1987) is the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (c. 490 BC – 430 BC), who lived in the Greek colony of Agrigentum in Sicily. His theories are mentioned in several of Plato’s dialogues. He maintained that all matter is made up of four irreducible elements: water, earth
, air and fir
e. A mystic
and a poet,
he is co
nsidered to
be the
founder
of clas
sical rhetoric
. He is also th
ought to be the
last Greek phi
losopher to wri
te in ver
se; two
fragments of
his works su
rvive: Kath
armoi (P
urifications
) and Peri
Phuseôs (
On Natu
re). An a
dvocate of de
mocracy, h
e came in
to conflic
t with his fe
llow citizens
of Agrig
entum and, a
s result
, was ban
ished with
his young
disciple, Pau
sanius. Wh
en he was
asked t
o return, he
preferred to c
ommit suici
de by throwin
g himsel
f into the act
ive volc
ano at Moun
t Aetna. The
German write
r Friedrich H
ölderlin wrote
two versi
ons of Der
Tod des Emp
edokles in 1
798 and 1800,
and a fi
nal third
version in 18
20, all
three ult
imately unfini
shed. Th
ey were
conceiv
ed as five
-act trage
dies and a
ll three differ
in plot. Acco
rding to
Michael Ham
burger, Hölde
rlin’s English-
language t
ranslator,
the main reas
on why Hö
lderlin fin
ished no versio
n of the play
must be th
at he remained
too closel
y identified
with Emp
edocles
, at the
very period
in his life
when his own v
iew of the poe
t as phil
osopher
, proph
et and priest –
and as
tragic h
ero – was s
ubject to
perpetual c
risis and re-e
xamination. Hui
llet-Straub’s
The Death of
Empedocles
is based
on Hölderlin’s
first versio
n (the longes
t of the
three), w
hereas Bla
ck Sin is bas
ed on t
he thir
d version
.　　The subject
of Dani
èle Huillet a
nd Jean-Ma
rie Str
aub’s Der Tod
des Empe
dokles (T
he Death
of Empedo