The nights have gotten bigger
And they continue to grow
Soon they will not be accommodated
in my head anymore
It is not possible to summarize a literary work, but these lines from Kristina Lugn's collection of poems Kill him! from 1978, much of what became her hallmark includes: the personal address, the autobiographical material that never became private but instead formed into something that many readers could share or recognize. Heavy everyday experiences conveyed with a kind of absurdist freedom.
Kristina Lugn can recall Sonja Åkesson, the directness, everyday life there, but also an ironic cheek behind the treacherous childish talk: "I have never been raped / in a truly exclusive department store". No, and this "I" is also not Kristina Lugn, but a role that played out all the women's literature in the 1970s and 1980s: the vulnerability of women's lives, the free sexuality, the dependence on consumption and anesthetics, the darkness of the kitchen and the sex.
Her poetry became increasingly novelistic , the poems longer, more narrative, like long replicas without answers, they talked past each other, but never past the reader. The road to the theater scene was short, plays such as "Tant Blomma" (1991) and Idlaflickorna (1993) are poetic dramas with no actual action that portray a female, often middle-aged experience. They premiered at the Dramaten, but eventually Kristina Lugn acquired her own theater, Brunnsgatan 4, whose intimate stage was made for her dialogues, or whether there were internal monologues between two sides of a divided ego.
"I long to be the main character in my own life," Kristina Lugn said of her characteristically frail Stockholm in a summer program many years ago. It is the longing she embodies again and again in poems and dramas that won a large audience. Her different poetry self, which all resemble each other, found it difficult to find her role, but for that very reason they made it a little easier for all of us: life is not only tragic, it is also tragic.