Chicago to St Louis (via Vancouver): ‘Right (Write) On!’

Abstract

Williams had used his motto ‘En avant’ ever since 1937 to close his notebook entries, conclude his letters, or terminate his fiction, just as he did the short story ‘Miss Coynte of Greene’: ‘It’s time to let go, now, with this green burning inscription: En Avant! or ‘Right on!’¹ The expression, as Felicia Hardison Londré has recently pointed out,

[…] does not seem to have meant exactly ‘Forward!’ to Williams. When we look at his use of the motto in his letters and notebooks, it almost always connotes something more like ‘Keep going!’ or ‘Bon courage!’ or perhaps even something not too different from Sarah Bernhardt’s motto ‘Quand même!’ — ‘Never mind!’ ‘So what!’ ‘No matter!’ ‘In spite of everything!’ Indeed, in his plays and fiction as well as in his letters and notebooks, Williams seems to have associated the phrase ‘En avant!’ with the concept of endurance.²

Williams did not mean ‘Forward, March’ in the sense that French General ‘Papa’ Joffre meant it in September 1914, when he ordered his troops to advance during the battle of the Marne. It was just his way of ensuring himself that he would wake up tomorrow morning and write.