Mod B

Question 1

Attached

1

SUBJ

Answer 1

‘Even when one is no longer attached to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them;’

Epigraph

Reveals subjective narratives that objects carry perpetuated by their connection to their owner - restoration of the truth

Question 2

Japonisme

2

SUBJ

Answer 2

‘It was to be a covert book on japonisme, the way in which the West has… misunderstood Japan for more than a hundred years’

Netuske are a metonym for Jewish identity

De Waal finds solace in them due to shared experiences

Question 3

Vitrine

3

SUBJ

Answer 3

‘He’d open the sliding doors of the long vitrine… and would get out the netsuke one by one’

Multisensory interaction with the netsuke - synthesises experiences of his ancestors, haptic epistemology finds comfort in relationship

Question 4

Repetition

4

SUBJ

Answer 4

‘I liked the way that repetition wears things smooth,’

Tactile imagery

Likened Ephrussi history to a story with many layers - exposed with continued interaction with the objects

Question 5

Collection

6

SUBJ

Answer 5

‘It is a very big collection of very small objects.’

Dualism

Inherent juxtaposition within the netsuke - holds memories as De Waal unveils his family’s trauma

Question 5

Fraying

5

SUBJ

Answer 5

‘It seemed an unfinished, fraying memory.’

Leitmotif

Transience of memory - decaying of memory throughout time - netsuke repair and restore ephemeral narratives passed through family

Question 6

Asymmetric

7

SUBJ

Answer 6

‘They are always asymmetric… you cannot understand the whole from a part.’

Appreciation of netsuke - parallel the Jewish experience, enable the restoration of the family identity

Question 7

Open - witnessed

8

SUBJ

Answer 7

‘I want to… feel it open… I want to know what it has witnessed.’

Kinaesthetic imagery

Promotes physicaly restoration of the narrative

Question 8

9 Collect - knowing

9

SUBJ

Answer 8

‘I think it allows him to collect, to turn looking into having and having into knowing.’

Anadiplosis

Transmutes the netsuke from something Charles and De Waal posses, to something they can garner truth and connection from

Question 9

Dark

1

OBJ

Answer 9

‘For rooms covered in gold, it is very very dark’

Displaced - cannot connect - derailed physically

Question 10

Acculturated

2

OBJ

Answer 10

‘I do not understand what it means to be part of an assimilated, acculturated Jewish family,’.

Impacts his corporeal, kinaesthetic body

Question 11

Disappeared

3

OBJ

Answer 11

‘I know nothing about any of them: the Ephrussi family are so perfectly assimilated they have disappeared into Vienna.’

Can no longer rely on the netsuke to reveal the truth of the narrative - must accept the objectivity

Question 12

Loss inheritance

4

OBJ

Answer 12

‘This feeling of loss, of having failed to preserve an inheritance, affected Viktor profoundly.’

Importance of memory and legacy to the displaced Jewish cultural narrative - permanence of narratives in transience of identity

Question 13

Uncounted

5

OBJ

Answer 13

‘The uncounted and the unmeasured started at last to be counted very accurately.’

Netsuke are able to gain value in memory now that everything is transient - stand witness to the events of aryanisation

Question 14

Nazi to Jews

6

OBJ

Answer 14

‘You think you own us, you fucking foreign shit. You’ll be fucking next, you shit, you fucking Jews.’

High modality language

Affliction of generational trauma on De Waal - displacement of netsuke from the Ephrussi ancestral home

Question 15

Furniture ranked

7

OBJ

Answer 15

‘Every piece of furniture, every object ranked,’

Intrinsic connection between the netsuke and Ephrussi history - corrupts the monolithic narrative told by De Waal

Question 16

Erased

8

OBJ

Answer 16

‘I am wrong. The family is not erased, but written over. And finally, it is this that makes me cry.’

Truncated syntax

Netsuke withstand aryanisation and provide permanent objective truth

Question 17

Couldn’t put back together

9

OBJ

Answer 17

‘It was a family that could not put itself back together.’

Displacement of the objects results in the dissolution of the Ephrussi narrative - de Waal can no longer avoid the harsh effects of trauma

Question 18

Centre of Iggie’s life

1

FUS

Answer 18

‘For right in the centre of this house, in the centre of Iggie’s life, are the netsuke.’

Reconciliation of the netsuke - not othered anymore

Question 19

Lose strangeness

2

FUS

Answer 19

‘Here the netsuke become Japanese again. They lose their strangeness’

Not subject to anti-semitism that was rife previously, re-establish their place in the narrative

Question 20

Passport

3

FUS

Answer 20

You assimilate, but you need somewhere else to go. You keep your passport at hand. You keep something private.’

Anaphora

Synthesis of the narrative, personalises the memoir - netsuke repair trauma

Question 21

Concrete

4

FUS

Answer 21

‘Some traces are more concrete.’

Provide permanence in spite of continued transience of memory and identity

Question 22

Patina

6

FUS

Answer 22

‘Perhaps patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed…’

Tactile imagery

Layers provide all aspects of the truth - repair and synthesise the memoir

Question 23

Begin again

7

FUS

Answer 23

‘The netsuke begin again’

Perpetual repair of the memoir - continued restoration and reconstruction of memory and Jewish identity

Question 24

Book - small Japanese things

5

FUS

Answer 24

‘I no longer know if this book is about my family, or myself, or is still a book about small Japanese things’

Polysyndeton

Coda is a synthesis point - it is all of these things