Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses/Wandering Rocks/239

Annotations

idée fixe     (French) obsession; fixed idea. This French term was first coined by the composer Hector Berlioz to describe a recurring musical motif in his Symphonie fantastique that represents the artist's obsessive love for his beloved. In 1885 it was established as a quasi-technical term in psychiatry to describe a form of neurotic obsession known today as monomania.