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This paper focuses on the preliminary step in the creative process: that of vision, considered in a non-clinical context. The analysis of this specific « act of seeing » follows Lacan’s indications concerning the « laying down of the gaze » in the aesthetic experience: the subject’s position, outside the realm of language and unconcerned with meaning, conditions the advent of a totally new language, of which the poetic act is the ultimate accomplishment.Virginia Woolf is a perfect example for analyzing the structural components of a creative process centered on sensation. This process, of a traumatic nature, is condensed in the explosive temporality of the instant as « moment of being », liable to open unto metaphorical inventions. This visionary moment, also described by Cézanne, enables us to grasp, in its nascent state, the link between the Real and the Symbolic.