Słowa kluczowe: doubling, eponymous narrator, Belgium, Italy, naturalistic literariness, symbolic ambiguity, death, Eugène Demolder, Delft faience, Schiedam's jenever, "imaginal vision", painter-alchemist, Belgian Symbolism, Belgian literature, alchemy, masks, Charles de Coster, Théophile Gautier, Germaine de Staël, La Légende d’Ulenspiegel, David Teniers (Téniers), Charles Baudelaire, Jules Huret, Naturalism, Symbolism, Parnasse, Zola, Mallarmé, Maupassant, Contes d’Yperdamme, Félicien Rops, polarization