Walter Benjamin's Schooldays. Pt2

Whilst at school in Haubinda, Walter describes a number of "catastrophic encounters." One such "threatening circumstance" was when a "tall hostile-seeming lout" asked him whether his father had left. For Benjamin "an abyss opened up".

The Trap

Whilst working as a Librarian at the University of Muri, Benjamin neglected his duties and spent too much time daydreaming. He regularly got into trouble with his boss, Professor Schicht. Benjamin loved his office which looked out onto a grassy knoll where staff and students would gather, oblivious to Walter's presence. He would regularly overhear private conversations and, as with everything else, Walter would collect them:-

Man and a woman drinking Sainsbury’s Basics Cider (£1.21, for 2 liters of 4.2%).
Woman: "Do you remember that one that were talking on the news?"

Coughs

"Do you remember that one that were talking on the news? Do you remember? They called her summat. Paula or summat. She were talking on the news and then the next day she were dead.
They asked her “Why are you working when theres a maniac on the loose?” She said she needed the money and the next day she were dead. Do you remember?"

Walter's Mates

1913 and Walter is living in Freiburg, hanging around with the German Youth Movement. Here he describes some of his mates:-
"The kind of people I associate with: There's Keller, with the beginning of a new important novel and with a beautiful girlfriend whom I often see. There's Heinle, a good fellow. Drinks, eats a lot, and writes poems. Not very well dressed, doesn't have a girlfriend. Englert - he dresses even worse. Also has a girlfriend. His childishness is of immense proportions. He worships Keller as a god and values me as a demon."

At the University of Muri

Things had not been going well in the library at the university. Walter had been called to a disciplinary meeting with Professor Schickt. He had a whole, great routine planned out; he would quote from Hamlet, using the sponge speech, “You are a sponge sir, a sponge that soaks up the King’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. And when they squeeze you dry, as they must, there is nothing, nothing there. You are merely a sponge."
Great stuff, and true too. Unfortunately the meeting didnt pan out as intended and Walter ended up delivering a very different speech instead; “You Fucking Cockmuncher.”
Hmmm, in some ways it was better, but it hadn’t gone down well.

Ruskin's 2009

Well, 2009 was not a good year for Ruskin: BBC2's Desperate Romantics gave us a depiction of him as a porn-gazing cuckold, a dull, avuncular bore, set against the wild, passionate, revolutionary Rossetti and his gang. Infact it was Ruskin who was the revolutionary; the man who faced down the art establishment to champion Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites; the man who invented art history, public libraries and amateur road building; the first person to warn of pollution and global warming.