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From Action to Ethics
 Also available from Bloomsbury:

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Action, edited by Paul Henne and

Samuel Murray
Certainty in Action, by Danièle Moyal-Sharrock
Wittgenstein’s Lion, by Constantine Sandis
Reframing Ethics Through Dialectics, by Michael Steinmann
 From Action to Ethics

A Pluralistic Approach to Reasons

and Responsibility

Constantine Sandis
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2024

Copyright © Constantine Sandis, 2024

Constantine Sandis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension

of this copyright page.

Cover design by Constantine Sandis and Louise Dugdale

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-
party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were
correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience
caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no
responsibility for any such changes.

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Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and
sign up for our newsletters.
 

For Calypso
who can act for reasons but hasn’t quite made it all
the way to ethics.
But what first, Debbie, attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?
Mrs Merton
 Contents

List of figures viii

Preface and acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Actions, reasons, and ethics 1

Part I Action

1 Action cubes and traces 9

2 What is it to do nothing? 22
3 Are we superhuman or are we dancer? Action and will in the novels of
Anthony Powell 35
4 Reasoning to action 49
5 How to act against your better judgement 55

Part II Reasons

6 Dretske on the causation of behaviour 67

7 The objects of action explanation 78
8 Verbal reports and ‘real’ reasons: Confabulation and conflation 88
9 Can action explanations ever be non-factive? 101
10 Are reasons like shampoo? 113

Part III Ethics

11 Gods and mental states: The causation of action in ancient tragedy and
modern philosophy of mind 127
12 Motivated by the gods: Compartmentalized agency and responsibility 146
13 The man who mistook his Handlung for a Tat: Hegel on Oedipus and
other tragic Thebans 158
14 The doing and the deed: Action in normative ethics 175
15 Ethics and action theory: An unhappy divorce 188

Appendix: Basic actions and individuation 203

Notes 209
References 237
Index 265
 Figures

1 Action Necker Cube (Abstract) 12

2 Action Necker Cube (Concrete) 14
3 Moving my body 72
4 Turning my head 74
5 Raising my arm 76
6 Indicating stimuli 77
 Preface and acknowledgments

The essays in this book draw on material previously published between 2008 and
2022. I should like thank all of the publishers for their permission to re-use the relevant
material. I hereby acknowledge their original sources in chronological order, which
tells a different story from the one presented in the book:

‘How to Act Against Your Better Judgement’, Philosophical Frontiers, 3 (2) (2008):
111–24.

‘Dretske on the Causation of Behaviour’, Behavior and Philosophy, 36 (2008):

71–85. © Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. Reprinted with permission from
CCBS.

‘Gods and Mental States’, in Constantine Sandis (ed.), New Essays on the Explanation of
Action, 358–85, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. © Springer Nature. Reprinted
with permission from Springer Nature.

‘Basic Actions and Individuation’, in Timothy O’Connor and Constantine Sandis

(eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, 10–17, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
©Wiley-Blackwell; reprinted with kind permission.

‘The Man Who Mistook his Handlung for a Tat’, Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great
Britain, No. 62 (2010): 35–60. © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2010; reprinted
with kind permission.

‘The Objects of Action Explanation’, Ratio, 25 (3; Sep 2012): 326–44. ©Wiley-
Blackwell; reprinted with kind permission.

‘Can Action Explanations Ever Be Non-Factive?’, in Brad Hooker, Margaret Little,

and David Backhurst (eds.), Thinking about Reasons: Themes from the Philosophy of
Jonathan Dancy, 29–49, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. © Oxford Publishing
Limited. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

‘Verbal Reports and “Real Reasons”: Confabulation and Conflation’, Ethical Theory
and Moral Practice, 18 (2), 267-80. © Springer Nature. Reproduced with permission
from Springer Nature.
x Preface and Acknowledgments

‘Motivated by the Gods’, in Andrei Buckareff, Carlos Moya, and Sergi Rosell (eds.),
Agency and Responsibility, 209–25, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. © Springer
Nature. Reproduced with permission from Springer Nature.

‘Are We Superhuman or Are We Dancer?’, Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Anthony

Powell Conference, AP Society Press, 2016, 25–41. First published by The Anthony
Powell Society; reprinted with kind permission.

‘The Doing and the Deed’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 80 (July 2017):
105–26. © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2017; reprinted with
kind permission.

‘Are Reasons Like Shampoo?’, in Gunnar Schumann (ed.), Explanation in Action

Theory and Historiography: Causal and Teleological Approaches, 146–64, Abingdon:
Routledge, 2019. © Taylor & Francis Group. Reprinted by permission of the publisher
(Taylor & Francis Ltd.).

‘Reasoning to Action’, Philosophical Explorations, 23 (1; 2020): 180–6. © Taylor & Francis
Group. Reprinted by permission of the publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd.).

‘What Is It to Do Nothing?’, in Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco and George Pavlakos

(eds.), Negligence, Omissions and Responsibility: Reflecting on Philosophy of Action,
187–204, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. © Cambridge University
Press 2022; reprinted with kind permission.

‘Action Cubes and Traces’, in Carla Bagnoli (ed.), Time in Action: The Temporal
Structure of Rational Agency and Practical Thought, 32–51, Abingdon: Routledge,
2021. © Taylor & Francis Group. Reprinted by permission of the publisher
(Taylor & Francis Ltd.).

‘Ethics and Action Theory’, in Roger Teichmann (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of
Elizabeth Anscombe, 469-489, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. © Oxford
Publishing Limited. Reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.

While I’ve tried to keep any repetition of ideas to a minimum, some inevitable overlap
remains so as to enable the reader to dip into any given essay without prerequisites.
I have avoided the inclusion of any essays that are readily available online via free
open access, or which appear in other English collections of my work. I have also
chosen not to include any co-written essays. Modified versions of nine of the essays
listed above have been published (alongside six others) in a French translation by Rémi
Clot-Goudard as Raisons et responsabilité - Essais de philosophie de l'action (Ithaque,
2021; reprinted Éliott 2023). I cannot thank Rémi enough for his philosophical and
organizational help.
I would also like to thank Colleen Coalter, Becky Holland, Suzie Nash, Ben O'Hagan
and Liza Thompson at Bloomsbury, for all their help and patience; four anonymous
 
Preface and Acknowledgments xi

referees for the press for their encouragement and invaluable feedback; my wife Louise
Chapman for standing by me in sickness and in health; and our fellow Lex Academic
team members, Jennifer Swift and Jessica Oliver, for their unflinching support.
The raw material for this volume was published over a period of fifteen years, having
first been presented at more than one hundred seminars, workshops and conferences.
I hope that all of those who helped me to improve it will forgive me for not collating
all of my original acknowledgments here. I would be remiss, however, to not mention
Andreas Lind for his ongoing encouragement and advice during this time. I also
benefited from Visiting Fellowships at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
(2009 and 2014), Centre de Recherche en Ethique in Montréal (2014–15 and 2018–19)
and the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at the Murphy Institute at Tulane University
(2018–19), as well as from sabbaticals at Oxford Brookes University and the University
of Hertfordshire, financial support from the Spanish Ministry project ‘Modal Aspects
of Materialist Realism’ (2007–10), the NOMOS Network for Applied Philosophy
projects ‘Alternatives, Belief and Action’ (2010–12) and ‘Perspectival Thoughts and
Facts’ (2010–14), and the ‘Santander Research Project Award’ (2012–13).

The book is dedicated to Calypso, who will not read it.

CS
Poole, July 2023
xii
 Introduction
Actions, reasons, and ethics

Prologue
Action theory without ethics is empty; ethics without action theory is blind. The
essays collected here accordingly stand for a symbiotic approach to philosophical and
psychological accounts of (i) actions, (ii) their explanation and (iii) their moral status.
Each individual essay takes us from action to ethics, broadly construed. But the essays
also move collectively in this direction.
The book is divided into three corresponding parts. The first, ‘Action’
(Chapters 1–5), concerns the nature of action and its relation to agents. The second,
‘Reasons’ (Chapters 6–10), considers the reasons for which we act and how these relate to
other explanatory factors. The final part, ‘Ethics’ (Chapters 11–15), turns to questions in
moral psychology and normative ethics, approaching them from the perspective of the
book’s earlier discussions. A brief appendix, ‘Basic Actions and Individuation’, presents
a critical overview of the main positions on action individuation and the search for the
most basic form of action. These enquiries are not conducted ahistorically, but via an
intertwining with an eclectic history of ideas, from The Bhagavad Gītā and Sophocles
to Freud, Anthony Powell, Anscombe and Ricœur. It is tempting to describe the result
as a kind of applied philosophy of action, but the influence between action theory and
that which is extraneous to it runs in both directions.
Given how strongly interconnected I take the book’s main topics to be, it should
come as no surprise that its three parts are not so much divided by thematic boundaries
as they are united through investigatory fluidity. How can we offer accounts of either
reasons or rightness without a solid grasp of action concepts? Conversely, if an ontology
of action is to have any merit, then it needs to accommodate certain psychological and
ethical constraints.
On the one hand, we can conceive of actions as repeatables that can be done
intentionally or unintentionally; voluntarily or involuntarily; rationally or irrationally;
rightly or wrongly; individually or collectively; and so on. On the other, there exists
an equally valid conception according to which they are spatio-temporal particulars
with concrete causes and effects. What is the connection between these two senses of
‘action’, and how should it inform motivational psychology and ethical theory? These
are the questions that this book seeks to answer.
2 From Action to Ethics

I. Action
Part I develops a distinctive understanding of the relation of doings to things
done. This serves as a leitmotif throughout the rest of the book. In doing so, it also
carves out a space for agency and volition within the natural order of things. The
first chapter, ‘Action cubes and traces’, considers Paul Ricœur’s powerful suggestion
that we should understand things done as marks left on time by the events of our
acting, just as things written down are residual traces of writing events. While his
resulting account of actions as cubical volumes in space-time, which may be reached
from a plurality of perspectives, is an insightful one, I maintain that we would do
better to conceive of our deeds not as traces but as the leaving of traces, a distinction
with surprisingly important repercussions in both moral psychology and normative
ethics.
One corollary of the cubical account of action may be traced back to the
Bhagavadian view that all action contains inaction, and vice versa. Guided by this,
Chapter 2 (‘What is it to do nothing?’) argues that we should reject any theory that
rests on the metaphysical assumption that actions—or even their characterizations—
can be neatly divided into positive acts of doing and so-called ‘negative’ acts of
omitting, refraining and neglecting. I proceed to re-evaluate the doctrine of doing
and allowing and related puzzles concerning moral responsibility in the light of this
rejection.
Chapters 3–5 explore the relation between actions and their agents. ‘Are we
superhuman or are we dancer?’ does so by way of the novels of Anthony Powell.
Powell’s characters are satirically partitioned between agents and patients, with many
of those who at first appear to belong to the former set par excellence being ultimately
shown up. Powell’s novels serve as a comic warning of the perils – both theoretical and
practical – of overestimating our agential capacities.
‘Reasoning to action’ considers Jonathan Dancy’s recent defence of an ‘actionalist’
conception of practical reasoning. This has its roots in Aristotle’s thought that we can
equally reason from our current beliefs to action as we can to a new belief. In recent
decades this has been challenged by cognitivists and intentionalists who, respectively,
claim that practical reasoning can only result in either normative beliefs or intention.
My own version of the ‘actionalist’ conclusion holds that the aim and issue of
practical reasoning are logically connected in such a way that reasoning cannot result
in action without also resulting in some form of belief in action. This raises questions
about the very possibility of akrasia, which is the topic of Chapter 5, ‘How to act
against your better judgement’. Those who object to Davidson’s understanding of
how akrasia is possible tend to argue that he is committed to claiming that akratic
agents must in some sense hold contradictory judgements in deliberation. I try to
show that while there is nothing paradoxical in what Davidson says, his ‘solution’
only deals with that form of akrasia that Aristotle calls propeteia (rashness), at the
expense of the more puzzling case of astheneia (weakness). I conclude that, despite
certain failings stemming from its motivational internalism, Davidson’s theory is
essentially equipped with the right distinctions to demonstrate the possibility of
genuine astheneia.
 
Introduction 3

II. Reasons
This part of the book moves from reasoning to reasons. Debates about the ontology
of reasons are frequently conducted with surprising independence from questions
concerning the nature of action and its explanation. This leads to a number of
unfortunate conflations between the reasons we act for, the reasons that explain why we
acted as we did, and the reasons that motivated us to so act. The chapters in Part II may
be viewed as an exercise in analytic deconstructivism. They aim to demonstrate why
there can be no coherent analysis of ‘reason for action’ whereby it can simultaneously
act as a consideration, explanans, and motive or motivational force. Put more positively,
we should be conceptual pluralists about both actions and their reasons. I argue for this
explicitly in ‘The objects of action explanation’, which serves as a transition between the
first two parts of the volume. The chapter begins by distinguishing between different
conceptions of behaviour before exploring an accompanying variety of things that
‘action explanation’ may plausibly amount to.
Chapter 6, ‘Dretske on the causation of behaviour’, introduces Fred Dretske’s unjustly
neglected distinction between the triggering and structuring causes of behaviour.
Dretske maintains that intentional human action is triggered by perceptual events
(‘causes’) but structured by representational facts (‘reasons’). On this view, actions are
not events but, rather, causal processes of one event triggering another. This chapter
seeks to show that while Dretske’s causalism is considerably more persuasive than the
standard Davidsonian alternative, it ultimately fails to capture what is distinctive about
intentional action and its explanation.
If, however, we altogether abandon causalist accounts of action explanation, then
does this not render reasons epiphenomenal? The remaining chapters in the middle
section of the book seek to address this question from different angles. ‘Verbal reports
and “real reasons”’ (Chapter 8) examines the relation between the various forces that
underlie human action and our verbal reports about our reasons for acting as we did.
Its unabashed conclusion is that much of the psychological literature on confabulations
conflates a number of distinct motivational factors. The most interesting part of the
confabulation literature, then, is that many experimental psychologists are themselves
guilty of confabulation in their accounts of why their subjects behaved as they did.
I contend that subjects frequently give correct answers to questions about the
considerations they acted upon, while remaining largely unaware of why they take
themselves to have such reasons to act. Pari passu, experimental psychologists are
wrong to think that they have shown our everyday reason talk to be systematically
confused. This is significant because reason-ascriptions can affect characterizations of
action that are morally and legally relevant (a theme I return to in Part III). But far
from rendering empirical research on confabulations invalid, my re-interpretation of
it unclouds its true insights into human nature.
Chapter 9, ‘Can action explanations ever be non-factive?’, suggests that, although
anti-psychologists such as Dancy are right to contest the commonplace view that
agential reasons are psychological states, they throw the baby out with the bathwater
in concluding that reason-giving explanations must therefore be non-factive. An
apparent corollary of this view is the paradoxical thesis that the reasons for which we
4 From Action to Ethics

act are actually incapable of explaining why we act. I revisit this thesis in ‘Are reasons
like shampoo?’ (Chapter 10). Debates in ‘reasonology’ typically arise when theorists,
in the grip of different pictures, enforce Procrustean constraints on attempts to carve
nature at its proverbial joints. One such picture is that of a reason as a consideration
we act in the light of. Another is that of a reason as something that motivates us. A
third is that of reasons as explanations of processes or events. It is an illusion to think
that these distinct conceptions can be united under a single concept of a reason: one
whose correct analysis reveals a hidden triple formula. We would do better to embrace
a pluralism that allows for different concepts of a reason for different purposes:
psychological, socio-historical and ethical. Once we come to accept this, the vexed
question of whether reasons are causes dissolves.

III. Ethics
The chapter in the previous section have been guided by the thought that we cannot
sensibly divorce theories of action explanation from accounts of what it is to act in the
first place. In this final part of the book, I make the parallel suggestion that one cannot
simply plug in one’s favourite account of action into ethical debates without seriously
affecting the plausibility of any given theory.
The first three chapters of Part III (11–13) concentrate on the relation between action
explanation and moral responsibility. ‘Gods and mental states’ argues that, contrary
to popular opinion, ancient tragedy presents us with a percipient understanding of
human agency and responsibility that is preferable to most contemporary accounts.
This is because the ancients were wise to separate the motivation of action from its
causal production. ‘Motivated by the Gods’ looks to both Greek tragedy and Theodore
Dreiser’s An American Tragedy for insights into the ownership of motivational factors
that are not fully under our control. The liability for actions performed under such alien
influences, I maintain, is not merely causal but moral and psychological. ‘The man who
mistook his Handlung for a Tat’ acts as a bridge between the previous two papers and
the final pair (which focus on the importance of action theory for normative ethics).
This chapter compares the aforementioned distinction between doings and things
done to Hegel’s tripartite presentation of action under the aspects of Handlung, Tat
and Tun. I try to show that the latter anticipates the complex moral epistemology of H.
A. Prichard and W. D. Ross in its pluralistic approach to luck and imputation.
Chapter 14, ‘The doing and the deed’, makes a case for the importance of the
aforementioned distinctions to central questions in normative ethics. The lack of
attention paid by moral theory to the philosophy of action is striking when compared,
for example, to that paid by epistemology to the notion of belief. I demonstrate how
much more effectively we can steer through the debates between consequentialism,
deontology, virtue ethics and so on, once armed with a proper pluralistic
understanding of action concepts. Consider, for example, the debate concerning
whether or not intention matters to right action. It is prima facie unclear what it would
mean for intention to matter to the rightness or wrongness of a (repeatable) thing
done. By contrast, it is highly implausible that intention does not matter to the moral
evaluation of an agent’s particular doing of something. I contend, inter alia, that the
 
Introduction 5

notion of right action most amenable to virtue ethics is different from that used by, say,
consequentialists.
The final chapter, ‘Ethics and action theory’, looks back at mid-twentieth-century
attempts to think through issues in moral philosophy via questions about action. It
is a sad irony that this approach was effectively as a result of Anscombe’s influential
1958 article ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, in which she explicitly makes a case for it.
Having offered an analysis of how we got to where we are today, the chapter ends on
a more optimistic note for the future of action in ethics, for which this book serves
merely as a groundwork.

Epilogue
In a 2021 interview conducted by Chris Heath for GQ magazine’s ‘Happiness Project’,
filmmaker David Lynch found himself distinguishing between the doing of things, and
the work done:

I’m just kind of happy in the doing of things. [. . .] Getting an idea, or realizing an
idea, working on a painting or working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film.
[. . .] One thing I’ve noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work, for a goal,
for a result. And in the doing, it’s not that much happiness. And yet that’s our life
going by [. . .] It doesn’t matter what your work is, you just get happy in the work,
you get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn’t what you
dreamed of, it doesn’t kill you if you enjoyed the doing of it. It’s important that we
enjoy the doing of our life. (Heath 2021)

This is not a book about happiness, but for the most part I have enjoyed writing the
essays it contains. It is unlikely that they have achieved all that I set out to do. I hope
the reader will at least find some pleasure in perusing them, whatever the merits of the
text.
6
 Part I

Action
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Myyminen ja ostaminen on ohitse.

Kaikki aartehistot ovat kasatut kokoon molemmin puolin, ja minun

on aika mennä kotiin.

Mutta, ovenvartija, kysytkö tulliasi?

Älä pelkää, minulla on vielä jotakin jäljellä. Kohtaloni ei ole

kaikessa vetänyt nenästä minua.

Tuulen tyyneys uhkaa myrskyä, eivätkä turmiokkaat pilvet

lännessä ennusta hyvää.

Hiljainen vesi vartoo tuulispäätä.

Kiirehdin joen yli kulkemaan, ennenkuin yö minut yllättää.

Hoi, lauttamies, sinä odotat palkkaasi!

Kyllä, veljeni, minulla on vielä jotakin jäljellä. Kohtaloni ei ole

kaikessa vetänyt nenästä minua.

Tien varrella, puun varjossa, istuu kerjäläinen. Ah, hän katsoo

kasvoihini arasti toivoen!

Hän luulee, että olen rikas päivän säästöistäni.

Kyllä, veljeni, minulla on vielä jotakin jäljellä. Kohtaloni ei ole

kaikessa vetänyt nenästä minua.

Yö pimenee ja katu yksinäistyy.

 Tulenkipinät hiiluvat läpi lehtien.

Ken olet sinä, joka seuraat minua hiipivin, hiljaisin askelin?

Ah, tiedän, että toivosi on ryöstää kaikki säästöni. En tahdo tuottaa

sinulle mielipahaa.

Sillä minulla on vielä jotakin jäljellä. Kohtaloni ei ole kaikessa

vetänyt nenästä minua.

Tulen kotiin keskiyöksi. Käteni ovat tyhjät.

Odotat tuskaisin silmin ovellani, vaiti ja unetonna.

Kuin uupunut lintu lennät povelleni kiihkeässä rakkaudessa.

Oi, oi Jumalani, paljon on vielä jäljellä. Kohtaloni ei ole kaikessa

vetänyt nenästä minua.

59

Et mitään loppumatonta hyvää anna, suvaitsevainen ja sumuinen

äiti, tomu!

Kulutat voimasi täyttääksesi lastesi suut, mutta ravintosi on niukka.

Ilosi lahja, jonka suot meille, ei ole koskaan täydellinen.

Leikkikalut, joita laitat lapsillesi, ovat hauraita.

 Et voi täyttää kaikkia nälkäisiä toiveitamme, mutta miksi sinut sen
vuoksi hylkäisin?

Hymysi, tuskan varjostama, on suloinen nähdä silmilleni.

Rakkautesi, joka ei tunne täyttymystä, on kallis sydämelleni.

Povesi on ruokkinut meitä elämällä, mutta ei kuolemattomuudella;

siksi valvovat silmäsi ainiaan.

Aikakausia olet värein ja lauluin työskennellyt, mutta vieläkään ei

taivaasi ole valmis, ainoastaan sen heikko mielikuva.

Kyynelsumu on kauneusluomiesi yllä.

Tahdon tyhjentää lauluni mykkään sydämeesi ja lempeni sinun

lempeesi.

Tahdon turvata sinut työllä.

Olen nähnyt vienot kasvosi ja rakastan murheellista tomuasi, Äiti

Maa.

60

Maailman vastaanottosaleissa viihtyvät yksinkertaiset heinänkorret

samalla nurmikolla päivänsäteiden ja keskiyön tähtien kanssa.

Niinpä jakavat lauluni tyyssijansa maailman sydämessä pilvien ja

metsien sävelten kanssa.
 Mutta, rikas mies, sinun hyvinvoinnillasi ei ole mitään osaa
auringon iloisen kullan ja mietiskelevän, kimmeltävän kuun
yksinkertaisesta suuruudesta.

Kaikkisyleilevän taivaan siunaus ei ole langennut sen yli.

Kun kuolema tulee, se kalpenee, kuihtuu ja hajoaa tomuksi.

61

Keskiyöllä sanoi askeetiksi aikovainen:

"Nyt on aikani jättää kotini ja etsiä Jumalaa. Ah, kuka on niin

kauan pitänyt minua tässä harhaluulossa?"

Jumala kuiskasi: "Minä." Mutta miehen korvat olivat suljetut.

Nukkuva lapsonen rinnoillaan makasi hänen vaimonsa

rauhallisessa levossaan vuoteen toisella puolen.

Mies sanoi: "Kuka olet sinä, joka olet minua niin kauan
hulluttanut?"

Ääni sanoi jälleen: "Jumala." Mutta mies ei kuullut sitä.

Lapsi nyyhki unissaan ja puristautui lähemmä äitiään.

Jumala käski: "Seis, hullu, älä jätä kotiasi!" Mutta mies ei kuullut
vieläkään.
 Jumala huokasi valittaen: "Miksi vaeltaa palvelijani minua
etsimään ja samalla jättää minut?"

62

Oli toukokuu. Tukahduttava iltapäivä tuntui äärettömän pitkältä.

Kuiva maa ammotteli janoisena helteessään.

Silloin kuulin joelta äänen, joka sanoi: "Tule, armahaiseni!"

Suljin kirjani, avasin ikkunan ja katsoin ulos.

Näin suuren, suonvärisen puhvelin seisomassa joen rannalla

tyynine, kärsivällisille silmineen; ja nuoren puhvelin polvistuvana
vedessä ja pyytävänä sitä uimaan.

Hymyilin huvittuneena ja tunsin suloisen henkäyksen

sydämessäni.

63

Miksi kuiskit niin hiljaa korviini, oi Kuolema, minun Kuolemani?

Kun kukkaset putoavat illan suussa ja karjat palajavat

omettoihinsa, hiivit hiljaa minun vierelleni ja puhut sanoja, joita en
tajua.
 Näinkö sinun täytyy etsiä ja saavuttaa minut uneliaan muminan ja
kylmien suuteloiden oopiumilla, oi Kuolema, minun Kuolemani?

Eikö häitämme seuraa mitkään komeat juhlamenot?

Etkö tahdo kiinnittää seppeltä ruskeihin, kihariin kutreihisi?

Eikö ole ketään, joka kantaisi lippua sinun edessäsi ja eikö yö ole
punaisten soihtujen loimosta valaistuva, oi Kuolema, minun
Kuolemani?

Tule rauskuvine raakunkuorinesi, tule unettomassa yössä!

Pue minut karmosiinipunaiseen vaippaan, tartu käteeni ja ota

minut!

Valmista valjakkosi kärsimättömästä tömistelevine hevosineen

oveni eteen!

Kohota huntuni Ja katso minua ylpeästi silmiin, oi Kuolema, minun

Kuolemani!

64

Tulemme leikkimään tänä yönä kuoleman leikkiä, morsiameni ja

minä.

Yö on synkkä, pilvet taivaalla oikulliset ja aallot merellä raivokkaat.

 Olemme jättäneet untemme vuoteen, sysänneet auki oven ja
päässeet ulos, morsiameni ja minä.

Istumme keinussa, ja hurja myrskytuuli meitä takaa tuudittelee.

Morsiameni syöksyy ylös peläten ja riemuiten, värisee ja kietoutuu

rintapieliini.

Kauan olen häntä hellästi säilyttänyt.

Laitoin hänelle kukkaisvuoteen ja suljin ovet estääkseni kiusallisen

valon hänen silmiltään.

Suutelin häntä somasti suulle ja kuiskin armaita sanoja hänen

korviinsa, siksi kun hän puoliksi taintui raukeaan riutumukseen.

Hän on haihtunut epämääräisen sulouden pohjattomaan

terheneen.

Hän ei vastannut kosketukseeni, lauluni eivät voineet häntä

herättää.

Yöllä on myrskytuulen viesti vierinyt meille.

Morsiameni värisi ja nousi, hän tarttui käteeni ja tuli ulos.

Hänen hapsensa lentävät tuulessa, hänen huntunsa hulmuaa,

hänen kukkakiehkuransa kahisee hänen povellaan.

Kuoleman henkäys on kutsunut hänet elämään.

Me seisomme silmä silmää, sydän sydäntä vasten, morsiameni ja

minä.
 65

Viheliäisten ja keltaisten riisivainioiden yli luovat syksyn varjot

pilviään, joita nopsa-askelinen päivä ajelee. Mehiläiset unohtavat
imeä hunajaansa; valon juovuttamina ne liehuvat ja surisevat kuin
hullut

Sorsat joen saarissa hälisevät ilosta tyhjän takia.

Älkää antako kenenkään palata kotiinsa tänä aamuna, veljet,

ainoankaan ei työhön!

Valloittakaamme hyökkäyksellä sininen taivas ja työstäkäämme

aarteet avaruuden!

Nauru kulkee ilmassa kuin vaahto virralla.

Veljet, tuhlatkaamme aamumme arvottomiin lauleloihin!

66

Ken olet, lukija, joka luet laulujani vuosisatoja tämän jälkeen?

En voi lähettää sinulle yksinäistä kukkaa tämän keväämme

runsaudesta, en yksinäistä kultajuovaa pilvien korkeudesta.

Avaa ovesi ja katso ympärillesi!

Kokoa tuoksuvia muistoja kukkivasta tarhastasi, vuosisatoja sitten

kuihtuneiden kukkien muistoja!
 Tunteos sydämesi ilossa elävä riemu, joka lauloi eräänä kevään
aamuna kaiuttaen hilpeät sävelensä halki vuosisatojen.
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PUUTARHURI
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