Now, my friend, this is how I have woven my novel, or rather my history, whose hero you will have no difficulty in recognizing … I conceive of an artist, gifted with a lively imagination, who, in that state of the soul which Chateaubriand so admirably depicted in René, sees for the first time a woman who realizes the ideal of beauty and fascination that his heart has so long invoked. By a strange quirk, the image of the loved one never appears before the mind's eye without its corresponding musical idea, in which he finds a quality of grace and nobility similar to that which he attributes to the beloved object. This double obsession [idée fixe] pursues him unceasingly. That is the reason for the constant appearance, in every movement of the symphony, of the main melody of the first allegro.