Supported by his mother, Øverland graduated from Christiana Katedralskole (Christiana Cathedral School) in 1907 and enrolled as a philology student at the Royal Frederiks University (later Oslo University). The curriculum did not interest him, however, and he spent his time reading, writing, and studying painting. Around this time Øverland discovered Swedish writer August Strindberg's novel
Röda rummet (1879; translated as
The Red Room, 1913), a social satire that had a tremendous influence on him. Øverland never earned a university degree.
On the day his first book, Den ensomme fest (The Lonely Feast, 1911), was released, Øverland was hospitalized with tuberculosis at Gjøsegaarden sanatorium in Kongsvinger. He was declared healthy the following year. Darkness and death are the main themes of Den ensomme fest and Øverland's other early collections of poetry, De hundrede violiner (One Hundred Violins, 1912) and Advent (1915). The first two books feature bleak elegiac verses that did not impress critics, perhaps because many of Øverland's poems seemed anachronistic, being heavily influenced by poetry of the 1890s. In poems in Den ensomme fest such as "Angst," "Høst" (Autumn), and "Vestre gravlund" (Western Cemetery) Øverland offers the vitalism, narcissism, alienation, loneliness, and meditations on death of predecessors such as Sigbjørn Obstfelder and Vilhelm Krag.
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