о нетерпеливости интуиции

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Читаю автобиографию Джорджа Стайнера (Стейнера? Штейнера? Штайнера? ). Хорошее название у неё, кстати: Errata: An examined life.

Пора, наверное, вернуться к его After Babel и прочитать внимательнее на этот раз.

Стайнеру свойственна поразительная точность формулировок и метафор.

Вот из первой главы:

I have conducted my emotional, intellectual and professional affairs in distrust of theory. So far as I am able, I can attach meaning to the concept of theory in the exact and, to some degree, applied sciences. These theoretical constructs demand crucial experiments for their verificaton or falsification. If refuted, they will be superseded. They can be mathematically or logically formalised. The invocaiton of 'theory' in the humanities, in historical and social studies, in the evaluation of literature and the arts, seems to me mendacious. The humanities are susceptible neither to crucial experiments nor to verification (except on a material, documentary level). Our responses to them are narratives of intuition. In the unbounded dynamics of the semantic, in the flux of the meaningful, in the uncircumscribed interplay of interpretations, the only propositions are those of personal choice, of taste, of echoing affinity or deafness. There can be no refutations or disproofs in any theoretical sense. Coleridge does not refute Samuel Johnson; Picasso does not advance on Rafael. In humane letters, 'theory' is nothing but intuition grown impatient.

Выделено мной.