The Moment of Gestation

For what literary work would you like to go back and experience the moment of gestation?

The first words of a great work set down?  I think I would have liked to be present at Oxford when Tolkien wrote these words: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."  I imagine it was a cold, rainy night, or a cold, grey dawn, and Tolkien was sitting at the solid hulking desk in his study surrounded by his books.  He looked out the leaded-pane glass windows, which were diamond-shaped.  A small fire burned in the fireplace, and he imagined the comfort of the hobbit hole.  That is how I imagine it happened, and so much of that picture enters into my consciousness as details of the writing life: dark, bookish, secure against the elements, contemplating the world outside, but mentally being elsewhere.  Something archaic about the scene, connecting the past to the present and future.  I could go on, but I have other things to write...