In ”Mina löjen”, Kellgren both expresses the optimism for the future that characterized the early Enlightenment (modern man as well as modern society can develop into something else, something that is better and built on empiricism, on reason), but he also expresses the increasingly cynically tinged libertinism that followed the Enlightenment’s ideas about man’s possibilities and conditions. The poem is part of the movement that seeks to move away from the preconceived assumptions of earlier literature towards a time when literature explores ways to renegotiate its identity and examine new worldviews. Incidentally, this was something that Kellgren also did. In his later poetry, Kelllgren connected to a way of writing poetry and verse that he rejected and ridiculed as a young man. In Kellgren, the two sides of enlightenment are therefore united and merged into one. And it is precisely in that light that the enlightenment is interpreted today. The representatives of the Enlightenment celebrated critical thinking and reason, the pre-romantics sentiment and enthusiasm. These two seemingly separate approaches converge at a number of points. They both question timeless and universal scales of value and a divinely sanctioned hierarchical state. In common they also share the critique of the authority of all kind.
”Mina Löjen” is thus a veritable child of its time, even if its author, Kellgren, most certainly wrote it with an impatient eye on the future.
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