...precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard...something better than the exertions of mechanical skill. .. . The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age received into him the world around;...

...and distinction for our artists. When Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed in "The American Scholar" that "our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close," he was expressing a wish that had been in the cultural air for half a century." It's hard to pinpoint...

...American Scholar," his criticism had sounded more hopeful. "Perhaps the time is already come . . . when the sluggard intellect of this continent will...something better than the exertions of mechanical skill." But the iron lids of the continent had stayed closed, despite the best efforts of Bryant, Longfellow,...

...after Ralph Waldo Emerson's declaration of American cultural independence in The American Scholar' ('our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands draws to a close. . . . We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe'), even a writer from the banks of the...

...with the French Revolution. Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it in a statement of literary protectionism, "Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to...the learning of other lands draws to a close" ("The American Scholar," in Essays and Lectures [New York: Library of America, 1983], 53). 20 This assortment...

...Emerson was the major advocate of literary and intellectual independence for his country. 'Our days of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close', he proclaimed in 'The American Scholar'. 'The millions that around us are rushing into life, cannot...

...call for a new American literature based in kairos: "Perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard...something better than the exertions of mechanical skill" (Essays, 53). The kairos for American letters has arrived, Emerson asserts, and the world is waiting...

...monetary enslavement and cultivate "private obedience to his mind." The time was already approaching when "the sluggard intellect of this continent will...expectation of the world with something better than mechanical skill." 22 How was this monumental change to be effected? Emerson was sure of the answer...

...he called on Americans to free themselves from the dead hand of European culture. He said, "Our long dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands draws to a close. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing themselves." The statement paralleled his...

..."The American Scholar," that American artists and thinkers leave behind the models of colonial Europe: "Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close" (Selected Essays, 83). Or Poe's thoughts in his 1842 review of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales: "As Americans...