The well-known Dutch critic, Garmt Stuiveling, supports a negative opinion of Paul van Ostaijen's prose work. His comments betray perplexity and a reluctance to allow Van Ostaijen's work a permanent place in the development of modem literary history. Van Ostaijen's achievement, especially that of the tales, continues to bewilder even some of the more sophisticated interpreters. Critical mystification expresses itself in terms of barely concealed denigrations: experimentation, inaccessibility, five-finger exercises, diffuse multiplicity.¹ No one would ever assert that Van Ostaijen smoothed a path for the critic; he made no concessions to his readers. But he did not wilfully erect a fence to keep out intruders. A relatively large body of critical commentary on his own and his contemporaries' artistic endeavors indicates his desire to provide a theoretical correlative to his artistic productions. In most cases a patient reading of these theoretical writings would illuminate the alleged opacity of his work. Such an endeavor would refute the contention that the prose work contains inscrutable experiments without unity or pattern. Most tales share a common narrative perspective. Tracing the major ramifications of this fictional world necessitates the exclusion of many details. Their exclusion is a sacrifice to the emphasis on the tales' overall thematic unity.*