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The artists precede us, said Freud. And as Lacan has shown, in his work on Joyce or on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the process of creation can provide new outlets for the intimate mechanisms of the various psychic structures. What does Shiki, who created the modern haïku at the beginning of the Meiji era, teach us? This article attempts to follow his process of creation. Afflicted with spinal tuberculosis, crippled with pain, for Shiki, writing flowed like a bodily fluid. Experiencing words as reframed in equivalence with the world’s sounds set him on the path to the Shikian haïku. His process is one that begins with pain, moving from how it feels to how it is perceived, and tries to capture pain through the interplay of words. Giving objects a voice and a gaze, it undertakes a work of metamorphosis. This adventure of creation was the ethic Shiki lived by until his death.