Empedocle figura di Hölderlin. Filosofi sulle scene del Novecento

After a brief account of Klaus-Michael Grüber’s career as an outstanding director in German and European theatres between the 1970s and 2000s, the present contribution aims to analyse the poetical-philosophical direction style of his epoch-making production “Empedokles. Hölderlin lesen” (Berlin, Schaubühne, 1975). As a matter of fact, it represented a reaction against the traditional opinion of Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Der Tod des Empedokles” as lyrically beautiful but nearly unstageable and sheerly undramatic tragic fragments - unless reconstructed (and falsified) as a complete tragedy or cut down to an oratorio-like performance. Grüber paradoxically takes the “Lesedrama” literally and grounds at the same time his staging on the very issue of fragmentness itself, thus reviving Hölderlin’s luminous philosophical tragedy and its powerful verbal gesture for the contemporary stage.