该片是由达尼埃尔·于伊耶,让-马里·斯特劳布执导的剧情片,于1987年上映，主要讲述了:The subject of Daniè.le .Huillet and Jean-M.arie S.traub’s Der Tod. des Empedokles (The Death .of Empedocles, 1987) .is the Greek pre-Socr.atic philosophe.r Empedocles (c. 4.90 .BC – 430 BC), who liv.ed in the. Greek colony of Agrigentum. in Sicil.y. His theor.ies are mentioned in severa.l of Plato’s di.alogues. He maintained that. al.l matter is made u.p of f.our irreducible. elements water, earth, air. and fire. A mystic a.nd a poet, he is cons.idered to be th.e founder of class.ica.l rhetoric. He is als.o thought. to be the last Greek philo.sopher to. write in ve.rse; two fragments of his w.orks survive Ka.tharmoi (Purifications) and. Pe.ri Phuseôs (On Nat.ure). .An advocate of .democracy, he came into con.flict with his fellow. citizens of Agrigent.um and, as resu.lt, was banished w.ith. his young disciple, .Pausanius.. When he was asked to retu.rn, he pr.eferred to c.ommit suicide by throwing h.imself into the. active volcano at Mount Ae.tna..　　The German writ.er Fri.edrich Hölderli.n wrote two versions of Der. Tod des Empedokles i.n 1798 and 1800, and .a final third v.ersion in 1820, al.l t.hree ultimately unfin.ished. Th.ey were conceived as five-a.ct traged.ies and all .three differ in plot. Accor.ding to Michael. Hamburger, Hölderlin’s Eng.lis.h-language transla.tor,　　.the main reason. why Hölderlin finished no .version of the play m.ust be that he remain.ed too closely .identified with Em.ped.ocles, at the very pe.riod in h.is life when his own view o.f the poe.t as philoso.pher, prophet and priest – .and as tragic h.ero – was subject to perpet.ual. crisis and re-exa.minati.on.　　Huillet-St.raub’s The Death of Empedoc.les is based on Hölde.rlin’s first version .(the longest of. the three), where.as .Black Sin is based on. the thir.d version.