Images and Functions of Rome in William Carlos Williams's A Voyage to Pagany

ABSTRACT:This article offers an analysis of the Italian section, and in particular of the Roman sojourn, of William Carlos Williams's neglected novel, A Voyage to Pagany (1928). A mixture of fiction, autobiography and travelogue, it is the fictional memory of a real trip to Europe taken by the Williamses in 1924, and that proved to be relevant for Williams's creative education and for the development of his poetics. Implicitly through the novel, Williams recalls the autobiographical experience of the composition of his improvisational work Rome, and this article analyses the relationship between this "fragmented" and unfinished manuscript and the Roman ruins and fragments depicted in A Voyage to Pagany, which throw light on many of Williams's unresolved inner conflicts concerning the nature of creativity, the value of Europe to an American artist, and his role as a doctor/writer.