Excerpt

Excerpt from The Fifth String, by John Philip Sousa

Mrs. James Llewellyn, whom, you no doubt remember, we met in Florence
the winter of 18--, immediately after I reached New York arranged a
reception for me, which was elegant in the extreme. But from that night
dates my misery.

You ask her name?--Mildred Wallace. Tell me what she is like, I hear
you say. Of graceful height, willowy and exquisitely molded, not over
twenty-four, with the face of a Madonna; wondrous eyes of darkest blue,
hair indescribable in its maze of tawny color--in a word, the
perfection of womanhood. In half an hour I was her abject slave, and
proud in my serfdom. When I returned to the hotel that evening I could
not sleep. Her image ever was before me, elusive and shadowy. And yet
we seemed to grow farther and farther apart--she nearer heaven, I
nearer earth.

The next evening I gave my first and what I fear may prove my last
concert in America. The vision of my dreams was there, radiant in
rarest beauty. Singularly enough, she was in the direct line of my
vision while I played. I saw only her, played but for her, and cast my
soul at her feet. She sat indifferent and silent. "Cold?" you say. No!
No! Francesca, not cold; superior to my poor efforts. I realized my
limitations. I questioned my genius. When I returned to bow my
acknowledgments for the most generous applause I have ever received,
there was no sign on her part that I had interested her, either through
my talent or by appeal to her curiosity. I hoped against hope that some
word might come from her, but I was doomed to disappointment. The
critics were fulsome in their praise and the public was lavish with its
plaudits, but I was abjectly miserable. Another sleepless night and I
was determined to see her. She received me most graciously, although I
fear she thought my visit one of vanity--wounded vanity--and me
petulant because of her lack of appreciation.

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Explanation

Detailed Explanation of the Excerpt from The Fifth String by John Philip Sousa

Context of the Source

The Fifth String (1902) is a novel by John Philip Sousa, the famous American composer and conductor best known for his marches (e.g., "The Stars and Stripes Forever"). While Sousa was primarily a musician, this novel reflects his deep engagement with Romantic-era aesthetics, particularly the idealization of art, love, and suffering. The story follows an unnamed virtuoso violinist (likely based on Sousa’s own experiences as a performer) who becomes infatuated with a mysterious, ethereal woman, Mildred Wallace, whose indifference torments him.

The novel explores themes of artistic obsession, unrequited love, and the torment of genius, drawing from Romantic and Decadent traditions (e.g., Poe, Byron, and later Oscar Wilde). The excerpt provided captures the moment of the protagonist’s fatal infatuation, setting the stage for his emotional and artistic downfall.

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Themes in the Excerpt

1. The Idealized Woman as Muse (and Tormentor)

   • Mildred Wallace is described in hyperbolic, almost supernatural terms:
     • "graceful height, willowy and exquisitely molded"
     • "the face of a Madonna"
     • "wondrous eyes of darkest blue, hair indescribable in its maze of tawny color"
   • She is not a real woman but an embodiment of Romantic perfection—untouchable, divine, and emotionally distant. This aligns with the Romantic trope of the "femme fatale" or the unattainable muse (seen in works like Tristan und Isolde or La Dame aux Camélias).
   • Her indifference is more crushing than hatred because it invalidates his artistry. If she were "cold," he could resent her, but her superiority makes him question his own worth.

2. Artistic Genius and Self-Doubt

   • The protagonist’s performance is not for the audience but for Mildred alone:
     • "I saw only her, played but for her, and cast my soul at her feet."
   • Her lack of reaction shatters his confidence:
     • "I realized my limitations. I questioned my genius."
   • This reflects the Romantic anxiety of the artist: true art requires validation from the divine (or the divine feminine), and without it, the artist is empty.

3. The Agony of Unrequited Love

   • The narrator’s suffering is both emotional and physical:
     • "I could not sleep. Her image ever was before me, elusive and shadowy."
     • "abjectly miserable"
   • His love is one-sided and masochistic—he takes pride in his suffering ("proud in my serfdom").
   • The distance between them is framed in cosmic terms:
     • "she nearer heaven, I nearer earth."
   • This echoes Dante’s Vita Nuova (where Beatrice is a heavenly figure) and Petrarchan sonnets (where the beloved is unattainable).

4. Public Acclaim vs. Private Despair

   • The critics and public adore him, but their praise is meaningless because Mildred remains unmoved.
   • This contrasts external success with internal emptiness, a common theme in Decadent literature (e.g., The Picture of Dorian Gray).

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Literary Devices & Stylistic Analysis

1. Hyperbole & Idealization

   • Mildred is not described realistically but as a mythic figure:
     • "the perfection of womanhood"
     • "radiant in rarest beauty"
   • This elevates her beyond humanity, making her more of a symbol than a person.

2. Contrast & Juxtaposition

   • Public vs. Private:
     • The crowd applauds, but Mildred is silent.
     • The reception is "elegant in the extreme," but his misery begins that night.
   • Heaven vs. Earth:
     • "she nearer heaven, I nearer earth."
   • Artistic Triumph vs. Personal Failure:
     • His best performance coincides with his greatest despair.

3. Rhetorical Questions & Direct Address

   • "You ask her name?"
   • "Tell me what she is like, I hear you say."
   • "Cold?" you say. No! No!"
   • These create intimacy with the reader, as if the narrator is confessing in real time, heightening the emotional rawness.

4. Metaphor & Simile

   • "Abject slave" / "proud in my serfdom":
     • His love is not liberating but enslaving, yet he glorifies his suffering.
   • "Her image ever was before me, elusive and shadowy."
     • She is both omnipresent and untouchable, like a ghost or a dream.

5. Irony

   • The greater his artistic success, the deeper his despair.
   • The more he idealizes her, the more she ignores him.
   • The public sees a genius, but he sees only his own inadequacy.

6. Repetition & Emphasis

   • "No! No!" – vehement denial of her coldness, insisting on her superiority instead.
   • "Another sleepless night" – reinforces his obsession and torment.

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Significance of the Passage

1. The Artist’s Curse

   • The excerpt captures the Romantic myth of the tormented genius, whose greatest inspiration is also his destruction.
   • Mildred is not just a woman but a symbol of unattainable perfection, representing the artist’s impossible standards for himself.

2. The Illusion of Love vs. Reality

   • The narrator projects his fantasies onto Mildred, but she remains emotionally distant.
   • This foreshadows modernist themes of alienation (e.g., in Proust or Fitzgerald), where love is often a construct of the lover’s mind.

3. The Role of the Audience

   • The public’s applause is hollow because true art, for the Romantic, must be validated by the divine (or the beloved).
   • This reflects Sousa’s own struggles as a popular composer who may have felt unappreciated by "high art" critics.

4. Foreshadowing Tragedy

   • The line "my first and what I fear may prove my last concert in America" suggests that his obsession will ruin his career.
   • The fifth string (referenced in the title) is a mythical addition to the violin, symbolizing both artistic transcendence and madness—hinting that his love for Mildred will drive him to extremes.

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Conclusion: The Excerpt as a Microcosm of Romantic Torment

This passage is a perfect distillation of Romantic angst:

• Love is suffering.
• Art is meaningless without validation from the divine feminine.
• The greater the genius, the greater the despair.

Sousa (through his narrator) glorifies the pain of unrequited love, framing it as both a curse and a sacred duty. The beauty of Mildred is inseparable from the agony she inflicts, making her not just a character but a force of nature—one that will elevate and destroy the artist in equal measure.

The excerpt sets up the novel’s central conflict: Can the artist survive his own obsession? And if not, is the art worth the ruin? For the Romantic, the answer is yes—even if it leads to madness, failure, or death.

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Questions

Question 1

The narrator’s description of Mildred Wallace as "the perfection of womanhood" serves primarily to:

A. establish her as a three-dimensional character whose depth will be explored later in the narrative.
B. contrast her physical beauty with the narrator’s artistic mediocrity, underscoring his professional insecurity.
C. invoke a religious archetype, positioning her as a saintly figure whose virtue the narrator aspires to emulate.
D. reflect the narrator’s objective assessment of her qualities, free from the distortions of infatuation.
E. reveal the narrator’s idealization of her as an unattainable symbol, rendering her more myth than woman.

Question 2

The narrator’s insistence that Mildred is "not cold; superior to my poor efforts" most strongly suggests that:

A. his suffering stems not from her indifference but from his perception of her as existing on a plane beyond his reach.
B. she actively disdains his artistry, and his refusal to acknowledge this reveals his psychological denial.
C. her silence is a calculated strategy to manipulate his emotions, exploiting his vulnerability as an artist.
D. he is rationalizing her lack of response as a means of preserving his self-esteem in the face of rejection.
E. her superiority is a literal truth, as she possesses a deeper understanding of music than the critics or public.

Question 3

The phrase "she nearer heaven, I nearer earth" functions rhetorically to:

A. frame their relationship as a cosmic divide, reinforcing the narrator’s sense of existential inadequacy.
B. suggest that her physical location in the concert hall (e.g., a balcony seat) symbolizes her social superiority.
C. imply that her spiritual purity will eventually redeem him, lifting him from his earthly suffering.
D. critique the class disparities of Gilded Age society, where artists are relegated to servitude before the elite.
E. foreshadow her literal death, casting her as an angelic figure soon to ascend beyond the mortal realm.

Question 4

The narrator’s claim that "the critics were fulsome in their praise and the public was lavish with its plaudits, but I was abjectly miserable" is best understood as an example of:

A. dramatic irony, since the reader recognizes his talent while he remains blind to it.
B. situational irony, as his professional success directly causes his personal downfall.
C. verbal irony, given that his misery is disproportionate to the objective praise he receives.
D. Romantic irony, wherein the disparity between external acclaim and internal despair underscores the artist’s alienation.
E. cosmic irony, because fate has decreed that his genius will forever go unrecognized by his muse.

Question 5

Which of the following interpretations of the narrator’s sleeplessness is least supported by the passage?

A. It symbolizes the restless torment of unrequited love, a trope of Romantic literature.
B. It reflects his subconscious resistance to confronting the futility of his obsession.
C. It serves as a physiological manifestation of his artistic inspiration, a muse-driven insomnia.
D. It underscores the gap between his public persona as a celebrated artist and his private despair.
E. It indicates a supernatural haunting, with Mildred’s "elusive and shadowy" image acting as a spectral presence.

Solutions and Explanations

1) Correct answer: E

Why E is most correct: The passage overwhelmingly frames Mildred through the narrator’s hyperbolic, idealized language ("the perfection of womanhood," "the face of a Madonna"), which strips her of realistic traits and elevates her to a symbolic, almost mythic status. This aligns with Romantic traditions where the beloved becomes an unattainable abstraction rather than a flesh-and-blood character. The narrator’s worshipful tone ("proud in my serfdom") further suggests she is more construct than person, a projection of his desires and insecurities.

Why the distractors are less supported:

• A: The passage does not suggest Mildred will be developed as a complex character; she is a static, idealized figure serving the narrator’s emotional narrative.
• B: While the narrator does feel insecure, the description focuses on her divine perfection, not a direct contrast with his mediocrity.
• C: The "Madonna" comparison is aesthetic, not moral; she is not framed as a saint to emulate but as an untouchable object of devotion.
• D: The description is subjective and exaggerated, explicitly distorted by infatuation ("abject slave").

2) Correct answer: A

Why A is most correct: The narrator’s vehement rejection of "cold" ("No! No!") and his insistence on her superiority ("superior to my poor efforts") reveal that his torment arises from her perceived transcendence, not her indifference. He does not interpret her silence as active disdain but as evidence of her existing on a higher plane—one where his art cannot reach her. This aligns with Romantic tropes of the unattainable muse.

Why the distractors are less supported:

• B: There is no textual evidence she actively disdains him; her silence is passive, and his focus is on her superiority, not her cruelty.
• C: The passage does not suggest her silence is calculated manipulation; she is portrayed as indifferent, not scheming.
• D: While denial is plausible, the narrator’s language ("superior") goes beyond self-preservation—he glorifies her distance rather than rationalizing it.
• E: Her "superiority" is his perception, not an objective truth; the critics’ praise contradicts the idea that she has a deeper musical understanding.

3) Correct answer: A

Why A is most correct: The heaven/earth dichotomy is a metaphorical exaggeration of their emotional and existential divide. The narrator literalizes his inferiority, casting their separation as cosmic and insurmountable. This reinforces his Romantic despair—she is not merely distant but ontologically beyond him, a theme central to his suffering.

Why the distractors are less supported:

• B: The passage does not mention physical seating or social class; the divide is emotional and symbolic.
• C: There is no suggestion of redemption; the tone is one of irreparable inadequacy.
• D: While class may play a role, the primary focus is artistic and existential, not societal critique.
• E: Her "heavenly" description is metaphorical, not a literal foreshadowing of death.

4) Correct answer: D

Why D is most correct: The disparity between external acclaim and internal despair is a hallmark of Romantic irony, where the artist’s subjective torment contradicts objective success. This alienation—feeling unseen despite public validation—is central to the Romantic cult of the misunderstood genius. The narrator’s misery stems from Mildred’s indifference, which invalidates all other praise.

Why the distractors are less supported:

• A: There is no dramatic irony here; the reader does not possess knowledge the narrator lacks.
• B: The success does not cause his downfall; his obsession exists independent of his professional life.
• C: His misery is not disproportionate—it is thematically consistent with Romantic ideals, where love’s validation supersedes all else.
• E: There is no cosmic decree; her indifference is personal and psychological, not fated.

5) Correct answer: B

Why B is most correct: While A, C, D, and E all find textual support, B is the least grounded. The passage does not suggest the narrator is resisting confrontation; instead, he obsessively fixates on Mildred, embracing his torment ("proud in my serfdom"). His sleeplessness stems from active rumination, not subconscious avoidance.

Why the other options are more supported:

• A: Sleeplessness as a Romantic trope is explicit ("Her image ever was before me").
• C: His insomnia could be read as muse-driven, given his artistic fixation on her.
• D: The public/private contrast is central ("the public was lavish with its plaudits, but I was abjectly miserable").
• E: While supernatural haunting is a stretch, the shadowy, elusive description invites a spectral reading, making it more supported than B.