George Sanderson

Remembering MacSween

Had Father MacSween never become a writer and the founder of The Antigvnish Review, he would still deserve to be written about. His teaching, his preaching, his counselling, his unusually extensive knowledge, were extraordinary accomplishments.

MacSween began to write articles for The Saint Francis Xavier University periodical "Contemporary and Alumni News' in his early fifties. These articles, two of which are reprinted in this issue, speak with the authority and insight which would become familiar to readers of The Antigonish Review.

A few years later he responded to a request for short stories from a former student, Joe Coffey, editor of The Port Hawkesbury Sun (later re-named The Scotia Sun). Most of these were reprinted later in the burnt forest. MacSween had read McLuhan's Understanding Media prior to this journalistic foray and he had paid careful attention to McLuhan's perceptions on the attractiveness of the mosaic character of newspapers and the decline of alphabetic literacy. The implications for literary reviews were clear, as television spearheaded the emerging hegemony of electronic media.

Thus when MacSween became editor of The Antigonish Review a year after he founded it in 1970, he sought ways "to break up the print" by using graphics. Immersed in reviews andiournals since his college days, he was sensitive to the daunting effect of the hundreds of pages of solid type that confronted the reader of a literary review. Hcjudged correctly that literacy was entering a new period in which reviews could no longer rely on faithful readers doggedly pushing their way through a typographic wasteland formerly assumed to be the natural habitat of periodic literature.

Obtaining appropriate graphics was not an easy task in a small university located in a remote town. MacSween prodded drawings and doodles from talented colleagues, friends and contributors. bi6la egyedi, a multi-talented Hungarian immigrant living in near poverty in Montreal, became the most important source of graphics. Father MacSween liked his style, and b6la sent him hundreds of sketches and doodles. MacSween would sift through these drawings, sometimes accompanied by one or two of the other editors, in search of appropriate illustrations for the fiction and poetry. (béla, whose letters always contained attacks on the postal service was struck and killed by a postal delivery truck in 1982.) The graphics used at the beginning of the MacSween sections in this issue are taken from béla's work. The three birds used as The Antigonish Review logo were also done by him.

It was also during the early 70's that MacSween bowed to the requ'est of friends to p,,iblish the poems he had been writing for many years. His first poetry selection - the forgotten world - was published in 1972. Thus by the early 70's he found himself both actively editing and writing. (He would return to journalism in his last years, writing a series of reminiscences of his early life for the local weekly The Casket, see "Ironville" page II.)

Some thought it regrettable that MacSween did not begin his writing earlier. But he simply did not have the time, as is made clear in the conversation with Pat Walsh (page 235). That interview also stresses MacSween's emphasis on creation versus criticism. He never ceased to emphasize that literature was something to be enjoyed, not something to be dissected. He read the critics and he appreciated the criticism of those who, like Eliot and Pound, were themselves creative writers. He expresses this position clearly and briefly in the short piece entitled "From the Inside" (page 10).

His own procedure for writing an article was to read everything by the author in question. He would then read the major books and articles on the writer. Finally he would push all this material away, and equipped with a few notes, he would write, often completing his task in one or two sessions.

He did not envision an article or a review as a perfectly chiselled artefact, but as a means of bringing someone or something valuable to the reader's attention. Here, as in teaching, or conversation, in his fiction, as well as in his poetry, his intention was always to gain the interest of the audience, to introduce them to the best writing and thinking, to communicate the pleasures he had experienced in his own reading.

He did not aspire to the status of a recognized writer because writing was only part of his life. He was first and foremost a priest, and a teacher, and these vocations in many ways determined the style and content of all his work.

His drive to communicate insight and knowledge never fell into mere didacticism. MacSween's energy, accompanied by his temper and impatience, was habitually opposed to preaching or pomposity. His writing is permeated with the impulse to evoke a response towards transcendence, towards a spiritual dimension.

Although he sometimes was moved to scythe a hack (see "Alexander Pope Under Attack, As Usual", p. 166), the policy which he made explicit when he founded The Antigvnish Review was to seek out the good and ignore the bad. There was too much of the latter and too little of the former to indulge in the kind of splenetic energy that most of us enjoy in reviews and articles. Furthermore, MacSween's stylistic credo prohibited the display of cleverness in essays, fiction and poetry. He deliberately sought a neutral style, and although he enjoyed reading brilliant prose, he also believed that the temptation to be clever frequently betrayed the obligation of the writer to communicate something other than himself.

We have tried to present MacSween the writer by reprinting selections from his poetry, fiction' articles and reviews. We have also included a variety of articles, reminiscences, reflections and interviews on him which are meant to give the reader a partial view of the variety of his interests and activities. This section, beginning on page 235, is incomplete and varied, combining as it does the contributions of writers, editors, former contributors, friends and colleagues from many different arenas.

Father MacSween's friends and admirers urged him to be more aggressive in seeking attention for his writings. He resisted their entreaties. Had he taught in a larger University, his brilliance would have gained him a wide reputation. He was quite content to remain in Antigonish, but he would, from time to time, recall the exhausting but satisfying days of his early work in the New Waterford, N.S. parish. It was clear from his remarks that his move from glebe house to University was not a promotion but rather a trial which he endured cheerfully for four decades, becoming in this period as well-read as anyone in Canada. But the poetry reveals the pain and the longing that never diminished, and the unblinking focus on death. The daily exhaustion of the parish offered an immersion in meaningful activity which left no room for the meditations on mortality entwined with the highest moments of our Western culture.

We hope that the re-presentation of his work will do something to offset the undeserved neglect which has concealed a vital, moral intelligence at a time when tolerance, historical depth, religious commitment and the love of learning are becoming endangered species.

Father MacSween worked hard to establish The Antigonish Review as an outlet for talent as well as a source of enjoyment for readers. In dedicating this special double issue to him we reconfirm his primary goal - to give a voice to those who should be heard.

The Antigonish Review is a quarterly literary journal published by St. Francis Xavier University. The Review features poetry, fiction, reviews and critical articles from all parts of Canada, the US and overseas, using original graphics to enliven the format.

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