Book Review | The story of the family of August Ahlqvist, known as the knocker of Aleksis Kive, is non-fiction at its best

Antti Pirinen writes the history of the 19th century through August Ahlqvist’s family story and offers a colorful picture of lush Kuopio.

Nonfiction book

Antti Pirinen: Devils and angels. The worlds of the Ahlqvists. SKS. 600 pp.

Zachris Topelius The book of our country (1875, Finnish 1876) In the contemporary canon of Finnish literature, Johan Ludvig den Store is sovereignly regarded as the leader of Swedish-language literature (Runeberg). The poet A. Oksanen, bourgeois professor of the Finnish language, shines in the first place in Finnish literature August Ahlqvist.

In the recent history of the Ahlqvist family Devils and angels historian Antti Pirinen puts a great man respected by his contemporaries at the center of his story.

The author calls his information-rich work a “group biography”, which examines a wider group of people defined by certain criteria instead of one main character. The book follows Augustina Ahlqvist the phases of the four sons’ brothers, their spouses and descendants in the world.

The narrative makes a multi-level cross-section of the 19th century and combines the family members’ life stories, mutual connections and integration into contemporaneous networks as part of a wider movement that created the Finnish nation and eventually led to the birth of the Finnish state.

August Ahlqvist in Pest, Hungary, in the spring of 1862, photographed by Ede Pesky.

The story starts laundress Maria Elisabeth Kinnusen upon arriving in 1780 in Kuopio as a maid. There, his last name changes to Swedish Ahlqvist and he has two illegitimate daughters.

One of the daughters, Maria Augustina, entered her first service position at the age of 14 and from then on supported herself and her children in various service relationships.

While working in Hårdh’s cellar in Kuopio, Augustina must have gotten to know the lieutenant to Johan Nordenstam. In 1826, a boy was born from the relationship, baptized with a handsome name Karl August Engelbrecht.

Nordenstam left for the world to fight the Russian wars. A few years later, Augustina was pregnant again. The boy’s name was Frederick. Father was apparently a young officer, Alexander Jakob Wendt. The officers who left their mark in Kuopio each had a brilliant career ahead of them in the Finnish army and state administration.

Augusti and Fredrik’s early childhood was spent in the changing service relationships of a single mother. Vice judge by Karl Stenius in the service Augustina gave birth to two more sons, Oskar and George.

Pirinen offers a colorful picture of lush Kuopio, where at the beginning of the 19th century, almost a quarter of children were born out of wedlock, while the national average was six percent. Unmarried children were treated kindly among the people, but the treatment in the noble houses served by Augustina was not always friendly.

The experiences of his childhood years permanently embittered August’s mind. The feeling of incompetence, which was not replaced by any subsequent success and prosperity, marked August’s whole life. Bitterness seemed diabolical, especially in drunkards, even though the professor knew how to offend.

Gentlemanship and idealism caught August naturally on a class excursion leading to the rise. The Finnish nation was a cultural project for him.

The people he had known to the core since childhood, that sacred being of the century, he tolerated in the real world only from a distance, but loved burningly in poetic form.

In Literary History August Ahlqvist is responsible for Finnish literature’s Great Trauma, as it were Irma Sulkunen has coincidentally named 150 years ago Alexis Kiven Of the seven brothers a written smash review.

A scathing review has guaranteed the crooked professor a jet-black reputation. The controversy arising from Kive’s novel was a small episode in Ahlqvist’s versatile and productive career.

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Ahlqvist did pioneering work in his studies of Finno-Ugric languages, for which he made extensive collecting trips in the hinterlands of Russia. Ahlqvist’s position as developer of written language, coiner of vocabulary and translator was so central that the professor could consider it his own creation, which had to be protected from all kinds of intruders.

As a poet Oksanen was Eino Leinon I said the first “individual person” in Finnish literature. He also wrote the first sonnet in Finnish, an art ballad, a provincial song and a promotional poem. Ahlqvist wrote several pioneering works in the field of non-fiction.

The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences awarded the outstanding researcher with the internationally prestigious Demidov Prize.

The scientist Ahlqvist represented the top supporter of his time, but the poet Oksase did not become part of Finnish literature Shakespeare, whose pattern he already had time to adapt himself to. Time, the harshest sentence, has been put on the spot by student Stenvall.

Especially in a different kind nephew Fredrik moved in the social stratum. He began his career as a printer at Karsten’s printing house in Kuopio in 1844. His career as a writer and poet began after Fredrik published a translation of poetry in, among other places, Suomettare, founded by his brother.

However, Fredrik quickly landed on entertaining follow-up stories and translating educational booklets for children and young people into Finnish, which, alongside religious literature, were in great demand among the slowly expanding Finnish-speaking readership.

Fredrikin and Antti Manninen of the 72 prints published by the jointly owned printing house between 1863 and 1867, only three were fiction, the rest practical non-fiction, religious literature, theses and administrative manuals. The victory of the Finnish language was not only based on a few art poems and epics.

Fredrik was one of the most prolific translators of folk literature in the 19th century and was also active in civil society associations. He represented those carpenters who were left in the shadow of great men, who, like Eero Jukola, strive with their actions “for the happiness and the best of our country”.

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Ahlqvist’s in life stories, Pirinen also encounters accidents, suicides, contradictions, adversities and emotional tensions.

Augustin and by Marie Ahlqvist three small children died within a short time, and August was pushed aside in the power struggles of the Finnish Literature Society. Such blows increased bitterness.

However, Ahlqvist’s brothers were sons who loved their mother tenderly. Augustina and August were strong-willed and strong people, successful people. In the last years, Fredrik’s life took a turn for the worse due to excessive tendencies and alcohol.

August was happy to help his relatives after he became wealthy, but the relationship with Fredrik was difficult. He did not tolerate weakness – the more human, the less.

Augustine and Fredrik’s life stories describe the birth of Finnish literature on two different levels: August shaped the Finnish language into a European civilized language, Fredrik took care of the material conditions of the language and literature, publishing, finnishing and printing.

The stories of Oskar and Yrjö, the youngest members of the brother series, are necessarily overshadowed by the older ones in the work. The boys’ career progressed in the service of budding industry.

The Matali stratum of Pirinen’s 19th-century structural description is the background of Ahlqvist’s ladder of execution, the world of women, the roles and tasks of maid, mother, married wife and widow.

There is little trace of their daily activities in the pages of history, but without them the construction site of the fatherland would not have run for a day.

Pirinen’s family story is a fluently written and vivid contemporary history that describes the development of Finnish society in a variety of ways through known and unknown life events. That is, non-fiction at its best.

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