From a collection of three plays by E. Elinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, "The Staff, the Stick and the Executioner". The style of this play is aesthetic-philosophical . The author empathizes the reader with a mixture of rough and refined techniques, makes him shudder and think about the nature of man - a bizarre mixture of animal instincts and high thoughts. On the pages of the play Jelinek, in twenty-three scenes (separated from each other by skipping a line), tells the story of the development of the self-consciousness of the German people from the beginning of the XIX to the end of the XX century. It is told as if it was seen through the eyes of Friedrich Hlderlin, "the most German of German poets" .. The play is provided with a foreword and extensive commentary by translator T. A. Basakova .