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296 / A M E S [ 1909 ]the episodic Stephen Hero into A Portrait of the Artist, Joyce hit upon aprinciple of structure which reflected his habits of mind as extremely ashe could wish. The work of art, like a mother's love, must be achievedover the greatest obstacles, and Joyce, who had been dissatisfied with hisearlier work as too easily done, now found the obstacles in the form of amost complicated pattern.This is hinted at in his image of the creative process. As far back ashis paper on Mangan, Joyce said that the poet takes into the vital centerof his life 'the life that surrounds it, flingingit abroad again amid planetarymusic' He repeated this image in Stephen Hero, then in A Portraitof the Artist developed it more fully. Stephen refers to the making ofliterature as 'the phenomenon of artistic conception, artistic gestation andartistic reproduction,' and then describes the progression from lyrical toepical and to dramatic art:The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature whenthe artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an epical eventand this form progresses till the centre of emotional gravity is equidistantfrom the artist himself and from others. The narrative is no longer purelypersonal. The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowinground and round the persons and the action like a vital sea. . . . Thedramatic form is reached when the vitality which has flowed and eddiedround each person fills every person with such vital force that he or sheassumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. . . . The mystery of estheticlike that of material creation is accomplished. 4This creator is not only male but female; Joyce goes on to borrow animage of Flaubert by calling him a 'god,'* but he is also a goddess.Within his womb creatures come to life. Gabriel the seraph comes to theVirgin's chamber and, as Stephen says, in the virgin womb of the imaginationthe word is made flesh.'tJoyce did not take up such metaphors lightly. His brother records thatin the firstdraft of A Portrait, Joyce thought of a man's character asdeveloping 'from an embryo' with constant traits. Joyce acted upon thistheory with his characteristic thoroughness, and his subsequent interestin the process of gestation, as conveyed to Stanislaus during Nora's firstpregnancy, expressed a concern that was literary as well as anatomical.His decision to rewrite Stephen Hero as A Portrait in fivechapters occurredappropriately just after Lucia's birth. For A Portrait of the Artist* Stephen says the artist is 'like the God of the creation,' remaining 'within or behind orbeyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, paring his fingernails.'But Lynch sardonically qualifies this statement by saying, 'Trying to refine them [thefingernails] also out of existence.' Stephen makes no reply. A Portrait (481-2 [336-7]).t In Ulysses Joyce develops this metaphor and mystery of artistic creation elaborately. AsStephen explains in Scylla and Charybdis, the artist's brain-womb is violated by experience,a violation which in some sense it seeks. Outer and inner combine, like spermatazoonand ovum, to form a new creation, independent of its parents. 5