Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Page 369
J. V. SNELLMAN
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In 1845 Snellman had married the 17 year old Johanna Lo-
Wlsa Wennberg, daughter of an druggist from Kuopio; but his
conjugal happiness was to be comparatively shortlived. The
píarriage was a most successful and harmonius one, and despite
its shortness it left a deep and ineffaceable impression on Snell-
tnan’s character and conception of life. One daughter and four
sons were the blessing of these years. His young wife’s life ended
at the age of 29. The words Snellman wrote to his sister, Anna
von Essen, only a few days after his wife’s death, clearly de-
tnonstrate the pure beauty of his married life and the lasting in-
fluence it had on Snellman’s mind:
“I am experiencing the greatest adversity that misfortune
rnight ever bestow upon a man. My own wife, my dearest wife,
died Thursday, the 4th of this month. I am sitting here and sink-
jng to the depths of despair with these five children about me who
have been left without a mother; our beautiful, mild, patient,
good-hearted mother was only 29 years old. Evidently God, our
Lord, wanted to deprive me of all joy for the remainder of my
hfe. I must endure, and I will endure this”.
Snellman lived twenty-four years after his wife’s death and
died on the 4th of July, 1881.
The life and work of Johan Vilhelm Snellman, the greatest
Public-spirited citizen and statesman that Finland has ever known
has thus briefly been sketched. Snellman’s literary activity, in
Particular, was extremely manysided, partly because of the ex-
ccptionally keen interest he took in all aspects of human life, and
Partly because of his inner devotion as well as the feeling of
ruoral obligation which compelled him to devote his energies to
cverything needing improvement. Despite the diversity of sub-
Jcct-matter, almost everything about which Snellman wrote shows
his originality and independent creative ability. The Finnish
scientist, Professor J. E. Salomaa, has made the comment that
Snellman was an “exceptional polyhistor” under Finnish condi-
j-ions and that one may be further convinced of this by reading
his “Collected Works” which have been published in 10 volumes
hy E. Nervander (1B92—98).
Thanks to his ability to take part in and master so many
varied lines of endeavour, Snellman was both able to see the needs
°f the State as well as those of an entire epoch. In the course of
jurne Snellman became the representative of the nation’s synthetic
hfe, the art of working synthetically and universally always being