SACRIFICIAL HORSE:  THE LIFE OF MAX MUELLER

DUCHY OF ANHALT-DESSAU, GERMANY 1 – DAY. 1845. 1 We hear Dvorak’s Bagatelles, Op. 47. We see what looks likea star. It’s the glint on eye-glasses. A  sunny summer June,the sun is shining down on 22-year  old MAX MUELLER, a tiny figure in ordinary well-worn clothes, walking toward the front of a three-storied, white-bricked, fairy-tale palace with a orange tiled sloping roof, a central tower that reaches up to a blue sky and wisps of clouds, carriages, and a broad immaculate green front lawn. He knocks on the front door, which a servant in livery opens.
DISSOLVE TO:

2 INT. PALACE OF ANHALT-DESSAU – DAY. 2
We see an extremely bright, spotless Baroque interior of a German palace, with oil paintings like Durers, Rubens, and Van Dycks. Elaborate moldings all-white, crystal chandeliers, Chinoiserie, Dutch checkerboard tile floors. Sunlight sparkling through traceried windows. Max, a student, is petitioning the DUKE and DUCHESS of Anhalt-Dessau for financial aid. They stroll through galleries, casually.

DUCHESS
Bitte, I will write you some
letters of introduction, and
mention you to my brother the King.
You should meet: Friedrich
Ruckert, Alexander von Humboldt,
and the Prussian Minister to
England, Baron von Bunsen, living
in London. You have done well in
school, whatever it is you’re
studying.

MAX
Your highness, I studied Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew at the Nicolai
gymnasium where Leibniz–

DUCHESS

You haven’t befriended those
troublemakers I hope? Those
Jacobins like Theodor Fontane? Or
worse, those followers of Karl
Marx?

MAX
Your Highness, I do not believe we are here to find happiness on
Earth, but that does not mean we
are here for no reason. Anyway, I
would not sell my soul for a loaf
of bread. My philosophy has been
maturing through my reading of
Spinoza and Kant, and is not very
political.

DUKE
You are a serious young man! Hegel
too?

DUCHESS
(quietly)
Isn’t everything political in
Leipzig?

MAX
I’m serious, but I’m not that
serious, your Highness! Hegel is
all the rage in the beer halls . .
. I do not believe that only the
Idea is real, much less that the
Holy Spirit is the “thought of
God!” I have been reading Goethe’s
West-Ostliche Diwan and Friedrich
Schlegel’s Uber die Sprache und
Weishei der Inder. Recently I
walked to Berlin for the lectures
of August Schelling, where I first
heard of something called the
Upanishads, the Oupnekhat. After
talking with Schelling, I realized
my life should be devoted to the
translation of Indian scriptures.
On the six systems of Indian
philosophy, which are Yoga,
Samkhya, Nyaya Mimamsa,
Vaisheshika, and Vedanta–

Duke and Duchess give each other a look, amused. The Duchess hands Max three letters of introduction. Max looks at them, especially the letter of Baron Von Bunsen.

DUKE
Chip off the old block!

Max fans himself with the letters of introduction, looking relieved in CLOSE-UP, sunlight pouring in traceried windows. As Max folds the letters into an inner jacket pocket, hedrops them, picks them up, blushes, and bows.

3.
INT. STEAMSHIP CABIN 3 – DAY. 1846 3
We hear Mendelssohn’ Fingal’s Cave. We see 23-year old

MAX MUELLER, with his mutton chops, a handsome, well-dressed man in a cravat, vest, and black suit coat. A tiny desk, letters of recommendation on it, no windows, a thin brass bed in a very narrow room. We see Max trace on paper, dipping the goose quill in his inkwell intermittently writing out in Sanskrit.

MAX
(talking to himself)
Agni ile purohitam yagnyasya devam
rivigamhotaram ratnadhatamam . . .
The entire room vibrates. Max ignores it and continues to write.

MAX (CONT’D)
“Agni I worship; the chief priest
of the sacrifice–
CRASH. Max looks up nervously. He wipes the steam off his
glasses with his shirttail.
MAX (CONT’D)
–the divine priest, the invoker,
conferring the greatest wealth.”
The room tilts throwing Max out of his chair. His ink bottle
spills ink over his manuscript. Papers fly off the desk.
Max despairs, bangs on the wall with his fist, and lies down
on his bed. The bed rocks back and forth. He picks up a
random sheet off the floor and reads it aloud.
MAX (CONT’D)
Indra, wherever be thy home, come
to us O thunder-armed.

We hear a BANG, which throws Max out of bed. He crawls back. He looks around, curses, clenches fists, gets up, and tries to take a nap, hands behind head, eyes closed. Falls asleep.

YOUNG MAX
Why are you crying, Mother?

4 INT. MAX’S CHILDHOOD HOME IN VILLAGE OF DESAU – DAY 4 (FLASHBACK: 1827.)
A door BANGS. We see a stark kitchen with wooden furniture, a breakfast table with bread crusts on it. An uneaten roll on a plate. A full cup of cold coffee.
Max’s mother, ADELHEIDE, paces stiffly as if with broken bones, wringing hands. Anxiously, she sits. Max, four years old, enters the kitchen and stands next to her holding her hand. Max’s sister crawls up on her lap. It resembles a Madonna and Child briefly.

ADELHEIDE
Your father is dead. He died in his sleep last night. He went to heaven.

YOUNG MAX
No!

YOUNG MAX’S SISTER
Hea-ven.

YOUNG MAX
Max pushes open the door to his parents’ bedroom. We see the outlines of a body under the bedclothes.

YOUNG MAX
Father! Father!
We see Max hugging his dead father’s corpse, and crying.

YOUNG MAX (CONT’D)
No! He’s still alive! Father!
Father! Get up! Are you going to
heaven, Mother? Mother, don’t
leave us! Is he still alive up
there? Wake up! No!
Max’s sister runs into the room, sees her father dead, accidentally pulls the blanket off her dead father’s face,
which is anguished from his heart attack. Adelheide follows her into the bedroom, distraught. SCREAM.

ADELHEIDE
Max. We have to tell the pastor.

YOUNG MAX
(weeping with sister in
arms)
No! Father is coming back!
DISSOLVE TO:
We see Max wake up startled. He sits up and looks around. A queasy look on his face.
He throws open the cabin room’s door, but the door SMASHES somebody, WILLIAM RUSSELL, in black frock coat and black trousers, who jumps out of the way, SHOCKED, and spills his snuff from his snuff box, which he drops; then disappointed
he tries to pick snuff up off the deck hall floor, to no
avail. Corridor ROCKS.
INT. PADDLE 5 STEAMER – NIGHT. 5
We see Max running down the narrow corridor. Russell follows him down the hall. The hall TILTS. Max has left the door to his cabin open, and we see that he has dropped a letter in the hall. The letter travels on its own, blown by the wind.

6 EXT. ENGLISH CHANNEL – NIGHT. 6
Thunder. Black waves swash over the deck of the chugging, thirty-horsepower paddle steamer. Heat lightning. Water wheels turn. The sky, ashen, cabbage green, sick, resembles a squid in a phase of inking behavior. Thunder. Max is getting sea-sick on the wobbly deck. Passengers scurry, children shriek, hands cupped over their ears. A burly 30-year old William Russell with an Irish tongue, the brogue of a blue-eyed giant, brandy and cigars, comes to Max’s aid,amused. 

RUSSELL
(with Irish accent)
Are you in the land of the living, man?

MAX
Ja, Ich glaube so. Vielleicht.
Max tears off his glasses, and clings to the taff-rails, face
turning green at the wine-dark water, he is heaved with the heaving of the wine-dark sea. Waves CRASH. LIGHTNING zigzags over the white cliffs of Dover. Max’s eyes are large and brown, he has a high forehead, his high hairline brushed back in a comb of brown hair. He keeps brushing off his coat, with fastidious sweeps of his hand that seem to change nothing. Max examines his coat for the taff-rail residue, trying to appear fastidious.

RUSSELL
German! What brings you to England? Snuff? Good for the constitution!

Russell’s beard, mustache, and uncombed hair give him the look of a barrel-chested, broad-faced brown bear that has just found the honey in the hive. He offers Max some snuff.
Max is curious. Russell snorts it first with pleasure. Max
tries it and starts turning white.

MAX
(thoughtfully)
Ich gehe to London for my work of translation. Ugh!
(laughs good humoredly)
Not for snuff! I assure you! What
is snuff?

Max brightens. He looks like the tenor in a romantic opera, whose sole task is to win the hand of the rustic sweetheart, and who in the end succeeds. But his face turns purple and he gets sick again, then feels better. THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. Squalls on horizon.

RUSSELL
So you are a translator of German?

MAX
Not quite. I am student of
philology. Translator of Sanskrit
texts, the Rig Veda, the world’s
oldest book, maybe seven thousand
years old! Passed down word of
mouth, without breaks, or mistakes,
all that time. It is a sacred text-
-not unlike the Alcoran of the
Musulmans. To support myself, I
copy other texts for patrons,
manuscripts by hand, the Rig Veda
alone will take five or ten years .
..
Wobbly deck, bowsprit angling like a needle in a magnetic haystack. Bow dips. Deck chairs slide across decks. Paddle steamer broadsided by waves.
RUSSELL
More snuff?
Max waves him off.
RUSSELL (CONT’D)
Why in the world would anyone want
to READ a 7,000 year old book?
Probably nothing but superstitions
by now! Why in the world would
anyone want to TRANSLATE a 7,000
year old book?

MAX
I want to locate the source of the
One ground from which all the
world’s religions flow. That’s how
I like to think of my life’s
journey. Like discovering the
source of the Nile, or finding El
Dorado! Anyway, I cannot give up
my Sanskrit! The language is
incredible, more fascinating than
Greek, Latin, and Arabic–more
precise, and richer.
The paddle-steamer smashes into its dock. SCREAMS. A dog flies out of a woman’s hands. A child YELLS for “Pooter.” We hear a crash and see passengers jostled. Russell catches

Max who almost gets tossed overboard. Lightning strikes the top of a tree on shore.
MAX (CONT’D)
Is it night or day? What time is
it? I should be translating the Rig Veda right now.
RUSSELL
And I should be drinking at the club! You must be a landlubber! MAX
And you are a sailor? A soldier?
Or a revolutionary?
RUSSELL
No, but lately I have made a career of writing about one: Daniel O’ Connell. The Catholic Emancipator? Heard of him? Mayor of Dublin? MAX
Was he involved in a duel or something? No, wait–jailed for his political beliefs two or three years ago?
RUSSELL
Crucified on a Celtic cross! Damned Peel broke him–like a booterfly upon a wheel, unmerciful heavens!
MAX
You are a . . . a . . . what is the word, “journalist”?

RUSSELL
I am trying to scrape up a living with my pen! Curse of the Irish I gather! I’m hungry, aren’t you? After all your stomach must be emptied out of all its goots. I’ll take you to my club, we can take one of the new trains. Drink, eat, love up the women folk, aye, isn’t that the way of the world?
MAX
Kama is the Sanskrit word for pleasure of the senses. Kama is a worthy goal: along with Dharma, Artha, and Moksha. So I suppose

so!
RUSSELL
A man’s a man for a’ that, laddie,
Let’s grab our things and
disembark! Ernst ist das Leben!
Max raises an eyebrow.
DISSOLVE TO:
Max and Russell walk down the gangplank to the dock’s luggage area where people are waiting. We hear a raindrop splatter
like a crashing wave. Umbrellas pop out, passengers
huddling close under them. Max holds out his hand and
catches a raindrop.
MAX
My pleasure, William Russell!
RUSSELL
My kama, Max Mueller!
Max pulls out a handkerchief. It starts to rain in earnest.
They shake hands. We see them standing on the docks.
Crackles, percussive metallic sound of steel beads on a sheet
of steel. White cliffs of Dover behind them. It starts to
pour. Other passengers grab their luggage until only Max and Russell are standing there.
MAX
(almost screaming)
Wo ist . . . Where is my trunk? My
manuscripts are in that trunk!
We see Russell, twirling his mustache ends, talking to a
porter, who is nodding, who then holds out his hand, palm upward.

A shilling appears in it from Russell’s hand.Russell opens a large black umbrella. We see heat lightning flickering. Downpour. The rain comes down like cats and dogs, forcing Max and Russell to talk louder and scramble.
RUSSELL
Max! It will show up at the Custom
House. I have lodgings in London,
you can stay there! I have a room
off the Strand, and I have to go to
the office to file a report. We
need to get on board, quick!
Max looks shaken, Russell puts his arm around, smiles, points
at the door on the train. Max faints and collapses into a
big puddle.
EXT. CHARING CROSS TRAIN 7 STATION – DAY. 7
We hear Purcell’s Abdalazar Suite, Rondeau. Clack, clack, we hear the railroad cars. The locomotive screeches into the smoky station. A load of passengers scuttle out the passenger cars. They are looking up at the sky. The sun is coming out. We see Max and Russell meander through the train station at Charing Cross to the street curb. Russell wavesfor a hackney carriage. It’s  not raining. Max is picking bits of mud off his soiled clothes.
RUSSELL
If we stand in the sun, we can dry
out. Oi, is it true that the Hindus of India believe in the reincarnation of souls?
MAX
Samsara? Is that so far from the Christian belief of the soul surviving bodily death? RUSSELL
But to be reborn as a whankin’
monkey?
A hackney pulls up, the DRIVER looks curiously like a monkey, and he is eating peanuts. Max and Russell clamber aboard. MAX
(looking down)
If all our thoughts were to cease,
we might experience the Absolute,
the Divine Ground, the Ultimate
Reality.

RUSSELL
The Strand, good sir! Ama et fac
quod vis.
HACKNEY DRIVER
“Love and do what you will!” I
know that one: Saint Augustine. I
used to hear it whenever I went to
my favorite bordello by the Ponte
Vecchio in Florence, Italy, when I
was in Her Majesty’s Navy. You two
interested in something like that?
RUSSELL
No my dear fellow, we are good
Christians, can’t you tell?
Covent Garden’s vegetable and fruit stalls pass by. Fishwives sling cod. CLOSE UP of slimy codfish, oyster stew,
and stewed eel. Streets of commerce and entertaining
buskers, bustling shoeblacks, hurdy gurdies, rabbit salesmen,

create a noise. We see GRANBY STREET street-sign. Stalls of apples. Lively street scenes of cut-purses, coves,
chimney sweeps. One older prostitute and two younger prostitutes stand on street corner; nearby is a raree show. OLDER PROSTITUTE (O.S.)
William! Where have you been? You whankin’ monkey!
Max looks askance toward RUSSELL. HACKNEY DRIVER
(over his shoulder to
RUSSELL)
Peanuts?
EXT. 8 THE STRAND – DAY. 8
We hear Mozart’s String Quintet, K. 515. We see the horses’ mouths, and they neigh, gag, and slobber. We see the horses drop dung in heaps. Dung boys collect and hawk the dung.
The carriage pulls up to the garbage-piled curb on The
Strand. Londoners jostle by. Drizzling, dismal streets and charred-black iron bridges. Pedestrians cram themselves in crowds, wall to wall, street by street, wearing coal-colored
coats and holding up black mushroomed umbrellas, here and there. We hear the clop-pity-clop of iron horseshoes on clanking cobblestones. We see black carriages and fourwheelers, drawn by legions of harnessed draft horses under a sky black as soot here, clear as dew there, breaking up. A rainbow edges into the clouds and the sun wants to come out. But black smoke from coal drifts overhead, obliterating any potential rainbow. We hear church bells from St. Mary’s DING DONG. We see the clappers strike the bells. Max and Russell get out of the hackney, and Russell pays the driver, who tips his hat.
RUSSELL
(looking over shoulder,
then to Max)
Welcome to Londinium! How long are
you planning to stay here?
MAX
Ach so . . . I am not sure. I have
a letter of introduction to the
Prussian Minister, a Baron von
Bunsen. A letter of introduction
to the . . . I am seeking a
religious dialogue that will reveal
the common thread to all the
world’s religions, assuming there is one, in order to enlighten mankind–and I plan to present a letter to the Prussian Minister . . .
TWO CITY POLICEMEN in their uniforms on the wide boulevard patrol by. Fire brigades trot by. Omnibuses topped with men wearing top hats. A peddler selling “jars of London fog.” RUSSELL
(growling, then smiling)
Assuming it can be enlightened!
MAX
Soooo . . . the letter . . . I
could be a Perseus without a
Ariadne–and if that is so, I will
stay here forever, and I will die
in this labyrinth at the hands of
the Minotaur. The letter of
introduction! WHERE IS IT?
Policeman turn around and approach Max.
RUSSELL
Jay-sus on the cross, here come the
“Peelers.”
PEELER #1
Is everything in order, young man?
12.
MAX
I believe I have lost my invitation
to the residence of Baron von
Bunsen, the Ambassador from
Prussia!
PEELER #2
Oh! And I was to have dinner last
night with Sir Robert Peel! But I
forgot!
We see the peelers mosey on down the street. We see horse carriages, trotting at a slow clip. Max and Russell walk the narrow sidewalks past the three-storied square windowed, pediments, dormers, and chimney-potted buildings; and the smoky thoroughfare, which appeared so black as to have been burnt, charred to the wick, surrounds Max and Russell in a sepia haze of smog.
MAX
Well, Russell, it looks like they
will bury me here after all. I
can’t go anywhere without that
letter. I am doomed!

RUSSELL
Goths! Death is always lurking in
the backs of their minds. Don’t
worry, Max–I happen to know that
the Prussian legation is at 4
Carleton Terrace, the parties there
are some of the grandest in town!
MAX
4 Carlson Terrace Street! Oh thank
you! Life saver! Herr Russell, I
believe we are walking over the
graves of the old Romans here–the
same paths where Alfred the Saxon
sat before his troops–on his
battle horse before going to war!
RUSSELL
Der Strand, naturlich! Lodgings
just around the corner!
We see Max and Russell turn the corner and bump into JAMES LEGGE, a heavy-boned, square-chested, thickly-eyebrowed man. Legge is reading a wall poster that advertises his upcoming
lecture. His cheeks are like hearty but uneven tomatoes–his
expressions are dour, sober, and solemn, maybe puckish–his
chin is out, which shows off his combed sideburns; he is
cravated and frocked in long, more old-fashioned coat;
13.
in his eyes is a look of duty, his aquiline nose has been
sharpened on a grindstone. Three shave-headed, braided,
pigtailed young MANCHUS, in silk changshan caps and robes,
queued curios of exotic wonder, stand around at Legge’s side,
looking bored. The poster that reads:
“PUBLIC NOTICE: LECTURES, sponsored by the London Missionary Society, CHRIST’S MISSION IN CATHAY by the Reverend James Legge. THE PUBLIC IS INVITED TO ATTEND. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.”
RUSSELL (CONT’D)
What have we here?
LEGGE
(with Scottish accent)
We have here my invitation to all
and sundry for an evening discourse
on the viability of the Gospel
bringing salvation to the masses
who live in China.
RUSSELL
Your accent, sir?

LEGGE
Aberdeenshire, I was brought up in
Huntly, in Scotland.
RUSSELL
And you have been all the way to
China? And back? Sounds like a
story!
LEGGE
It is only a five month voyage,
give or take a few cyclones, along
with all the sharks.
MAX
I am curious, if you can do
missionary work here, why travel
halfway around the world?
LEGGE
Good question! I felt the calling
as a young man. My deceased mother
also told me it was the right path,
once when I stood by her grave. I
heard my mother’s voice from beyond
the grave. I knew then that I
should become a man of God. But,
as Congregationalists, we were
dissenters to the Presbyterians.
(MORE)
14.
I thought missionary work best; and
China the most in need of salvation
from damnation. Now I want to
spread the gospel across Asia.
I’ve started in Malacca with these
three young wards; whom I had the
pleasure of taking to Huntly with
me for their baptisms.
Russell, with a sort of asymmetrical aspect to his elfin look and locks, looks past the Manchus and some brooding paupers begging at his side importunately. He looks bored. He
smiles when he sees the same prostitutes walking around under a church’s clock tower, having caught up to Russell by happenstance.
RUSSELL
Three out of three million? It’s a
start. Have you ever tried
missionary work in Batavia, the
Dootch colony?

LEGGE
I was in Batavia’s Chinatown once,
and my host took me to a Daoist
service, in honor of Tianshang
Shengmu. We no sooner entered the
temple then my host promptly
denounced and disrupted the
service. He started arguing with
the Daoist worshippers, sailors,
and swells.
MAX
How did it end?
LEGGE
They thrashed him. No one was
saved.
RUSSELL
A pity that.
Russell, twirling his mustaches, is eyeing the prostitutes, who are eating apples and lifting up their shortened dresses, and displaying their BARE ANKLES.
RUSSELL (CONT’D)
A pity . . . Everywhere you go:
bad apples!
LEGGE (CONT’D)
15.
PROSTITUTE (O.C.)
William! Russell! There you are!
LEGGE
(turning away from three
prostitutes and Russell
to talk to Max)
What brings you to London, young
man?
MAX
I am going to the East India House
to finish translating the Rig Veda,
India’s holiest text, known as
sruti, divinely inspired by
Brahman. I’ve always been
interested in origins. The origin
of mankind, the origin of language,
and in them, the unity of all the
world’s religions underlying all
the world’s religious texts.
RUSSELL
(grumbles over his

shoulder)
So there will be no more cakes and
ale?
Russell leans forward, toward the women, with interest. An APPLE CART VENDOR, wearing a buckskin apron, plying his wares, approaches on the sidewalk. The three Manchus grab three apples without paying. We see a commotion among the three Manchus, the three prostitutes eating apples taunting Russell, and the apple cart vendor demanding payment. A crowd gathers. HUBBUB. A pickpocket successfully steals a stem-winder watch from a gentleman’s waistcoat fob pocket. Two policeman appear, prostitutes vanish.
PEELER #1
What is this row all about?
PEELER #2
Why, it’s the Prussian attache, of
course! Inciting a riot or
starting a war over here, are ye?
APPLE VENDOR
Stole me apples! Damn ther eyes!
Them Chineezees! Haul ‘em off and
hang ‘em. A shilling for the lot
of ‘em! Ai, shepherd watch yer
bloody flock!
16.
Legge digs in his pockets and pays off the vendor. Everyone looks satisfied. Crowd disperses. Gentleman can’t find his watch. Legge admonishes his pupils in Chinese.
LEGGE
(ignoring the incident to
get back to Max)
Ahem . . . a unity, a unity, can
there ever be a unity in Christ?
There is nothing but partisanship
within the walls of Christendom.
In China, this is not a problem,
because Kung, the Latin Confucius
that is, never spoke of four
things: athletic sports, chaos,
freaks of nature, and supernatural
beings. The nature of God for them
is the God of nature.
MAX
I believe there can only be one
transcendental God, just as there
can only be one “one.”

LEGGE
And what do you think will be your
reward for this belief?
MAX
Crucifixion.
RUSSELL
(annoyed)
What else is there?
EXT. EAST INDIA HOUSE, LEADENHALL 9 STREET – DAY. 9
We hear Schumann’s Scherzo from Quintet, Op. 44. Horse and
coaches are loading and unloading. East India House is a
formal, Euclidean box of pilasters in straight lines with
high-paned bay windows, reaching up to the spring sky. A neo- Classical palace, a classical pediment on top as a reminder
of Greco-Roman foundations. Agents and employees of the
Company are going up and down the front stairs. Some lean on
the iron fence, smoking pipes. Horse drawn carriages pass
by, tobacco smoke trails out their windows. Max is walking
up the steps with a Sanskrit book of fables under his arm
when suddenly an Indian business man walking down the steps
grabs Max by the shoulders from the front. Max emits a yelp.
The stranger is DWARKANATH TAGORE, in a wide-brimmed braided hat, broad dark mustache, graying dark hair, and piercing
mischievous eyes, satin pants, and a silk robe.
17.
DWARKANATH
Monsieur! I thought I told you
once in Paris: abandon all hope you
who enter here. The price of
admission: your soul!
MAX
Monsieur Tagore, cest vrai—
possiblement–do you think they
will give meine seele back to me
when I leave the building?
J’espere!
DWARKANATH
Nahin.
MAX
Facilis descensus Averno.
INT. EAST INDIA 10 HOUSE – DAY. 10
Horses clopping footsteps blend into Max’s echoing footsteps
down the voluminous hall. Max looks bewildered as he walks
around exploring for directions. He looks at a directory.
We see doors open onto offices, lecture halls, and committee
rooms, inside which we glimpse the marble statues of gods and

oil paintings of previous Governors General, Clive and Hastings, in togas. Small-minded clerks, adding receipts, reading letters, answering accounts walk to and fro. We see name-plates outside offices: Thomas Babington Macauley and John Stuart Mill. We see more giant boardrooms with enormous oil paintings on the walls. We see painted ceilings under
which meetings are being held. Max sees a young man his own age, EDWARD COWELL, also holding a book in Sanskrit. Cowell, with a friendly air, a pug nose, eyes set close together
like that of a dog that dug up something, his eyebrows high
up on his forehead in surprise, wears clothes of a very
ordinary and countrified working class, and there is even a
whiff of malt on him. An Eastern Ipswich accent is apparent
when he talks.
MAX
Do you know where I might find the
office of Horace Wilson?
Cowell sees the Sanskrit book under Max’s arm: the Hito
padesa. Each are both holding the same book.
COWELL
In the library. Down the hall and
to the right, are you a Sanskrit
scholar too? I see you have the
Hitopadesa.
18.
MAX
Haanji. I translated it. Now I am
interested in the Vedas, and I
understand Herr Wilson is the
expert.
Cowell shows Max that Cowell has a copy of the Hitopadesa
under his arm too. They laugh.
COWELL
He is at that. I discovered Horace
Wilson’s Sanskrit Grammar when I
was sixteen, it changed my life
forever. Well, just after William
Jones’ Persian Grammar changed my
life forever too!
MAX
I studied Persian with Friedrich
Ruckert. We looked at the Shahname
of al-Ferdowsi, but I think Ruckert
had no patience for me, so he sent
me to Eugene Burnouf. And Burnouf
sent me here to see Herr Wilson.

The previous scholar of the Vedas, Friedrich Rosen, died in the act of translation.
COWELL
Perhaps dying is only another act
of translation.
INT. OFFICE OF 11 H. H. WILSON – DAY. 11
A cluttered librarian’s office, packed with books on the
shelves. Old manuscripts and papers all over. Medical
papers, the Ayurveda. A heavy table, one heavy chair behind
which we see sitting HORACE HAYMAN WILSON, who has a large bald head with gray curls combed forward, aquiline nose, and
a small amused, pursed mouth. A large window behind his desk
fills the office with sunlight from the south, overlooking
Leadenhall Street.
MAX
Horace Hayman Wilson, Boden
Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford
University?
WILSON
Indeed! Herr Mueller! Burnouf
wrote me you were coming. So glad,
have a chair! Wait! Where is it?
19.
Wilson reveals a little hobble to his gait, and we hear a
little stutter to his speech, and we feel a little
awkwardness as he gets up to shake hands. He strains his
back when he moves his Sanskrit-German dictionaries off the
second chair to make room for Max. He drops some books onto
the floor.
WILSON (CONT’D)
You see, I am not a scholar, what a
spot of bother. I am a gentleman
who likes Sanskrit, and that is it
in a nutshell!
The light behind Wilson is blocked so that he is shadowy like
a specter, then the flood of light is blinding to Max when
Wilson gets up to putter around, looking for something.
Light in Max’s eyes makes him squint. Wilson looks confused;
he picks up and puts down heavy tomes, reaching vaguely for
his lower back.
WILSON (CONT’D)
These are the manuscripts of the
Rig Veda Samhita, waiting just for
you! Here, under all these other
books! These manuscripts have been

buried here for quite some time, I guess eons.
MAX
(skimming some pages) Splendide! Au commencement cet univers n’etait que l’atman. WILSON
Here is my Anquetil-Duperron
translation! I thought I had lost
it! Oupnekhat!
Wilson is reading slowly. He stops. He searches for and finds his eyeglasses in a coat pocket.
WILSON (CONT’D)
Ipso hoc modo illud subtile: et
hoc omne,unus atma est: et id
verum et rectum est . . . Tatoumes,
id est, ill atma tu as. Latin!
MAX
Hmmm . . . The universe is Brahman. Brahman is truth. It is the
universal soul, and you are It?
No, that’s not right! It is
difficult to be sure.
(MORE)
20.
Vedas, Brahmanas, Upanishads, sruti, so much to translate!
Burnouf told me translating the Upanishads is not as necessary as a translation of the Rig Veda Samhita with Sayana’s commentary, which would make me a great benefactor to the world. What do you think, Herr Wilson?
WILSON
What Ludwig von Beethoven said of Bach, he is not a brook, but an
ocean. That our English literature
is a brook, but Indian literature
is an ocean. So, I don’t know for sure. Burnouf should know, he studied under Silvestre de Sacy, Bopp, and Brockhaus.
MAX
Brockhaus wants to translate all of Somadeva’s Kathasaritsagara into

German. He agreed on a future for me in Sanskrit, since the Greek and Roman texts have all been taken. WILSON
You know I had no interest in
Sanskrit until I went to Calcutta
to be a surgeon. Henry Colebrooke
got me to read the plays of
Kalidasa. Then I was captivity
taken captive!
MAX
Not many German scholars have stood
up for the Sacred Books of the East
except: Alexander von Humboldt, the
Schlegels–and especially Friedrich
Schelling, my mentor. For a young
scholar in Germany, Sanskrit . . .
IS the only horse in the stable!
WILSON
(joking)
Then your mews must be Shankara!
MAX
(not getting it)
Philology is a newborn area of
study.
MAX (CONT’D)
(MORE)
21.
William Jones and the Royal Asiatic
Society are worshipped in Germany
by the upcoming Orientalists.
WILSON
Oh? How is old Franz Bopp?
Wilson stands up to get something, grabs his back, knocks over a bunch of books.
MAX
Bopp was in poor health when I met
him. I remember: he quoted a
Hindi pandit: you can spot the
European Orientalists by the curves
of their backs from hunching over
their Sanskrit manuscripts.
WILSON (CONT’D)
Tis true, tis true! My back is
bent with labor, my eyes are dimmed
with thought! But I have had a

satisfying life!
MAX
Schopenhauer in Frankfurt gave me
his advice.
WILSON
What did he say?
MAX
Just read the Upanishads, the rest
is priestly rubbish.
MONIER WILLIAMS has been obviously eavesdropping outside the door, waiting for his entrance. He is a lanky, but largely
jawed man, well-dressed in a cloak, coat, and choker collar surrounded by a black cravat for neckwear. In his primly
forward way, he makes his presence known like the sharpness
of a blade on a knife. He has the pallor of a two-legged
termite; or a night-creeping body snatcher, and he seems
impatient to get to the next graveyard. He is nervous, as if
even the smallest shaft of light might make him cringe, or
jump like a bug. The part in his fine hair angles almost to
the back of his head, and the rest of his hair he combs over
his ridged skull as if to cover the thoughts of baldness–his
thoughts race quickly, his eyes dart, his attention narrows
on Max like a fly.
MAX (CONT’D)
22.
WILLIAMS
Well, hello, what is this about
priestly rubbish? Whose priestly
rubbish! Can there be such a
thing? I do doubt it! Indubitably
so! And who are you, pray tell!
WILSON
Mr. Williams, Mr. Mueller.
Max and Williams shake hands coldly and with suspicion,
seeing who will let go first. They eye each other with a
cold and mutual hatred. They vie for Wilson’s approval.
WILLIAMS
Everything priestly is sacred! Is
it not, Mr. Molar? That is, as far
as Christianity goes! Am I early,
or are you late? What is that? Is
that the Vishnu Purana over there!
Wonderful! Do you mind if I sit
down Molar?–I have traveled quite
a distance, all the way from
Hertfordshire, that’s a good twenty

miles, as the train crawls . . . to get here! Railways these days, disgusting! Sitting there, exhausting! Be a decent Christian will you, there’s a good man, Molar.
WILSON
Mr. Williams, our friend here is translating the Rig Veda Samhita
with Sayana’s commentary. Wouldn’t that make him a great benefactor to the world? What do you think? WILLIAMS
The Rig Veda is a curious monument to a bygone worship, that’s all I
think! Just too old for we
moderns. Benefactor? Is that the
right word? Do you mean hero or–? Or . . . like that devil Mohammad according to that demon Carlyle?
No, Mohammad is Satan, and Thomas Carlyle is his prophet. Carlyle is
what the Americans call a “nigger lover”! Are you a nigger lover
too, Herr Mueller?
23.
MAX
I’m not sure I know what you mean? Isn’t there . . . behind all
religions one eternal, one
universal religion?
WILLIAMS
(snickers)
To say so, would not be orthodox,
to say the least! Not true in this
land! The land of the Church of England, the Church of Shakespeare and Wellington, and you are from–? MAX
Saxony? Anhalt? Leipzig? WILLIAMS
Aha! Lutheran! My first guess was Jew! But I knew it, German! Not
one of us! Knew it, by Jove! A Teuton! And a drinker like Luther
too I suppose?

MAX
Excuse me?
WILLIAMS
Do you take offense? Fritzi? Why
would a Lutheran come to London
except to try out its excellent
ales and preach drunken German
heresies!
Max grabs Williams by the throat and slams him into the wall. Books fall off shelves. Wilson looks afraid and freezes. WILLIAMS (CONT’D)
Get thee behind me, Satan! Take
your devilish claw away from my
throat, Beelzebub!
MAX
Do you engage in duels, mein Herr?
WILLIAMS
I can. I mean I know how.
MAX
Then I challenge you. I won three
duels at the University of Leipzig.
Four is a nice round number.
Another little scar won’t make any
difference.
24.
WILLIAMS
Duels are against the law! Aren’t they?
Max removes his hand from Williams’ throat, who overreacts over how much pain he is in, and he whinges on as if speechless, attempting to breathe. He sounds like he is
going to die. He grabs and embraces Wilson just to stand up. MOANS.
WILLIAMS
I think my neck might be broken!
WILSON
Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is no
way for scholars to behave. It is
not seemly for scholars to engage
in personal revenge or vindictive
prejudices! Academics are above
petty rivalries! Academics never
engage in personal attacks! Mr.
Williams, I have a chair for you,
over here. Good day, Mr. Mueller,
it was nice to have visited with
you! There will be no duel! There

will be no vicious backstabbing on the road to Eleusis!
MAX
(joking)
But Sanskrit has the dual.
WILSON
(not getting it)
Nor in the groves of academe, by
the Pierian springs, nor on the
slopes of Parnassus . . . such
things never happen! For shame!
We are scholars, and we don’t
compete like naked wrestlers eyegouging and breaking backs! There
is no room ex officio for
professors of violent convictions!
Williams is coughing, tearing up, and play-acting to “draw
the foul.” He looks at his hand for signs of blood. He
combs his hair back, and rearranges his wrinkled cravat. He palpates his throat for signs of injury and whimpers. He
takes his own pulse. He bawls into a handkerchief, having a
near nervous breakdown.
25.
WILLIAMS
Indubitably, did you hear that
Mewler? You’ll pay for this
someday!
Max brushes himself off. He leaves, but has forgotten his
book, the Hitopadesa. Outside the door briefly, he
eavesdrops and hears:
WILLIAMS (CONT’D)
Indubitably. Dr. Wilson, no
professors, scholars, or
Orientalists I know would stoop to
such barbaric, Germanic, Lutheran
behavior! It just goes to show
that the only civilized people are
the English. A pure race destined
to rule, blessed by God, in mind
and body above all the degenerate
subjects and loathsome neighbors!
Max re-enters, grabs his book, looks at Williams, then leaves
the office; on his way out he bumps into THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULEY, and this event knocks his glasses off accidentally and sends them flying. Max steps on his glasses and drops
his book.

MACAULEY
(hurrying)
Watch where you are going would
you, my good chap? Say is that
Sanskrit, good fellow? Why are you
reading THAT? Don’t you know that
all that sea of Sanskrit ink isn’t
worth one shelf of good European
literature?
MAX
(picks up his broken
spectacles)
So I’ve heard! I broke my glasses.
INT. 12 LODGINGS – DAY. 12
A spacious bedroom. A king-size, oak, four-poster bed with bedding, sheets, pillows. We see a weary Max taking off tie.
He is repeating scraps of his argument with Williams aloud.
We hear a knocking on his door. He opens the door. A COCKNEY MAID stands there with Max’s lost trunk of Rig Veda manuscripts. With big beefy pink arms, she picks up the
trunk and tosses it by the bed. Max is overcome with joy.
26.
COCKNEY MAID
Found your trunk, luv! The Customs
‘owse had it delivered ‘ere!
MAX
I don’t understand what you said
but thank you. I can rest easy
now. I didn’t sleep last night,
worrying about it!
COCKNEY MAID
‘ere you are, w’ud you like another
pillar, to sleep with?
MAX
Pillar? Is the roof falling down?
I don’t think the bed needs another
pillar. Where would I put another
pillar?
COCKNEY MAID
‘hind yer ‘ed, ‘ind yer noodle!
‘neath yer tose if yer feet be so
inclined!
MAX
You think I want to stand on a
pillar like Lord Nelson? I would
not find such a position the least

restful! You can give Lord Nelson
my pillar.
Cockney Maid slaps her thighs, and howls with laughter. We see her rotten teeth, bloodshot eyes, gin blossoms on her cheeks.
COCKNEY MAID
LAWD! Lawd Nelson don’t need
another pillar! Hah! es not goin’
to wake up anytime soon, now, is
‘e? You German folks! Pill-LOW,
not pill-lar!
Cockney maid leaves. Max dresses for bed, laughing to himself, crawls into bed, looking quite small in the enormous bed, but cosy as a comfortable cat now in his surroundings. Max realizes he doesn’t have any pillows; rolls his eyes, shrugs, smiles, sleeps.
FADE OUT
27.
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT 13 (FLASHBACK/DREAM) 13 We hear Bach’s Violin Partita #3. We see the whitewashed cottage of the Mueller home (among other cottages in town). We hear birds whistling and doves cooing. Oak and fir trees abound across the landscape, which slopes down toward the Mulde River. A park with a grazing golden stag. The sun shines over Dessau, a gated city, a Taj Mahal-like Basilica
in the distance. The main street, paved roughly with cobblestones, shows us the villagers in Easter dress leaving church with yellow umbrellas, and wearing saris, dhotis, and pajamas. We see Max look out the front window of the cottage at a mirror, fastened outside, in which he sees, in
reflection, a parade of elephants.
MAX (V.O.)
Indra is here . . .
An elephant, caparisoned with a carpet, howdah on its back,
is pulling an enormous coach-sized Easter egg with submarine windows , decorated and jeweled. Indra hops down from the howdah acrobatically. We see Indra open the side door of the coach: giant butterflies emerge. The elephant picks up
Indra with its trunk and tosses him miles away into the Mulde river. Schopenhauer walks by with a large black poodle. Max lugs his suitcases awkwardly through the cottage doorway. Max pulls out a one thaler coin, looks at it, rubs it,
fingers it nervously. We see the thaler turn into clarified
butter and drip through his hands. We see Adelheide and Max’s sister excitedly chattering behind Max, blocked by his luggage, looking for the carriage, his ride. They all sort

of stumble on to the main street. The coach is gone. Schopenhauer appears to have car-jacked it. Black poodle
looks out submarine window.
MAX (V.O.)
I missed my ride! I will be late!
MAX’S SISTER
I want my own elephant, mutti!
ADELHEIDE
You will do well at bee-keeping,
Max, now that you’re twelve, and
you are a man now, like a true
beekeeper, like your father. And
his father’s fathers going all the
way back to Apis. He is so proud
of you. He tells me such things.
Tod ist nicht Tod. He wants to
know: do you need any socks?
28.
MAX
You can get into heaven without
socks, can’t you, I need to wash
mine.
Max can’t see when he looks up at sky. Sun’s rays coagulate into a thousand bees chasing Max into a churchyard cemetery. Vultures wheel in the sky overhead, as for a sky burial. ADELHEIDE
Professor Carus has socks, Leipzig
is well known for socks. And I
will stay here tending your
father’s grave with the bees.
We see Adelheide jump down into an open grave. She opens the coffin with bare hands. The coffin is stuffed with rats
running around in circles. Vultures land near Max’s feet
when he looks into open grave. The cockney maid throws a bag of cobras into the open grave pit. Adelheide picks one up
and bites its head off.
ADELHEIDE (CONT’D)
And you will write to me here?
This coffin needs to be cleaned
again and again! I just cleaned
it!
We see the rats disappear, whapped by Adelheide’s broom. The streets of Dessau fill up with rats. Max is pushing a wheelbarrow filled with cobras down the main street. We see rats at Max’s bare ankles, he is wearing a low-cut dress like
a prostitute on Granby Street. And a rat runs up his dress.

He tears off his dress. He tries to eat a hard-boiled egg,
his sister gives him. Kicking rats aside, he is running, but
not moving.
MAX
Hackney! Delhi! I’ve never seen
the Champs Elysee like this before
and it is terrifying!
MAX’S SISTER
I’ll be a Duchess soon! What if
someday you became a journalist?
You could write about my bee-hive
collection and write honeyed words.
MAX
(naked on an ostrich)
Sister, father could not have been
on this Earth just for socks.
(MORE)
29.
God cannot have created us only to
follow instructions like a
railroad.
ADELHEIDE
(crying)
Our lives are only long sacrifices.
And now, I must sacrifice you on a
pyre. Max! I hear the village
locomotive. It’s leaving! Go! I
know you will make the family proud
of your bee-hives!
MAX
(carrying chickens)
Mother, the bond between us will
never break!
Pistol shots ring out. We hear insane laughter. Max looks
up at the sky and there is a hot air balloon with Monier Williams and H. H. Wilson in it. Max sees a sandbagged gondola with Dwarkanath Tagore in it holding a case of silver dueling pistols. Max dives headlong into the balloon, while his mother and sister help get the fuel lighted, and the
balloon floats off, over Paris skyline at night–full moon
and stars in background.
ADELHEIDE
(riding a giant rat)
Max! You will starve to death in
Leipzig . . . the best thing for a
rat in a trap to do is eat the

cheese!
Max is in a balloon, opposite Monier Williams in a balloon,
and they are both firing dueling pistols at each other’s
balloon, higher and higher as they go into the sky above
Paris. Ladies in taffeta gowns and ball dresses, gentlemen
in capes and cloaks, parade below with binoculars. A bullet
punctures Max’s balloon’s envelope and the entirety swirls as
if down a drain into darkness, with screams and shouts, the
crowd gasps.
MAX
Break out the bees, Tagore!
Tagore opens a case for dueling pistols, which is lined with
honeycombs. Bees attack Monier Williams, crawling over his
face. Max falls out of gondola and plummets to Earth,
falling, free falling.
MAX (CONT’D)
30.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. LEIPZIG HOME OF PAUL CARUS – DAY. 14 1836 (FLASHBACK) 14 CLOSE UP of a coach, which from farther back is painted on an
Easter egg. We see a middle-class, Biedermeier-style living
room with Easter decorations. We hear the scherzo from
Mendelssohn’s Octet. HERR and FRAU CARUS are bustling about, house-cleaning, preparing for guests. We hear the front
door. Frau Carus opens the door and greets FELIX and FANNY MENDELSSOHN.
FRAU CARUS
Max! Wake up! The Mendelssohns
are here!
FANNY
(at piano)
There he is! So like your dear
father.
FELIX
(joining Fanny)
Wilhelm’s son, Friedrich! Why are
you standing by the stove? Don’t
be shy!
MAX
I’ve never seen a tile stove like
this! It heats the entire house!
But I am Max now, not Friedrich!
FELIX
Of course. You were named after
the forester in your godfather’s
opera, how could I forget?

They all gravitate toward the Carus piano and take turns playing along with Felix, who improvises on themes from the various composers’ works who are mentioned.
PROFESSOR CARUS
Will you be a forester someday?
MAX
No, I will be ein Beethoven–or
eine Biene!
Everyone laughs. Frau Carus brings out torts, cookies,
sweets.
31.
FANNY
Felix, we must take Max to the
Gewandhaus. He must see Lizst,
wouldn’t that be wonderful?
FELIX
If Franz shows up!
FANNY
I hope that dreadful fellow Wagner
doesn’t show up!
FELIX
He might not after Schumann threw
him against the wall and challenged
him to a duel for his calling me a
Jew!
HERR CARUS
Will Jenny Lind be performing at
the Gewandhaus soon?
FELIX
If she is you can bet Wagner will
be in the front row!
FANNY
Sitting next to Schumann!
MAX
(innocently)
You were attacked by a fellow
composer for being Jewish?
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. PARIS 15 – DAY. 1845. 15
We hear Berlioz’ Hungarian March. Notre Dame facade. Wide tree-lined boulevards, the streets bustling with fiacres, horse-drawn carriages, and horseback-riders. The sidewalks are ambling with men in redingotes, waistcoats, and tall
hats, and the women are in bell-shaped skirts and bonnets– with sausage curls like corseted muses. Couples, arm in arm, and armed with their tickets to the Paris Opera House,

stroll. Boats on the Seine. A STREET URCHIN throws a rock at and runs from a well-to-do family dressed to the nines,
out for a stroll.
STREET URCHIN
Juif!
32.
Rock hits the wall, ricochets into a stray cat in a garbage
can.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. PARISIAN APARTMENT 16 BUILDING – DAY. 16
We hear a knock on a wooden door. The door swings open on a
salon and a 35-year old Frenchman–curly blonde hair that
swirls in curls around his high balding forehead, a prim
amused smile. In his robe de chamber, EUGENE BURNOUF, holds sheets of paper and a fountain pen. We hear his four
laughing DAUGHTERS. We hear a father, DWARKANATH, and son, DEBENDRANATH, arguing in Hindustani in a back-room. It’s
noisy. One daughter bangs on the piano, “Frere Jacques.”
The other three play jacks, one throwing the ball in the air,
another grabbing it. They tear at each other’s hair.
MAX
Monsieur Burnouf, I am a friend of
Friedrich Ruckert, a friend of the
Duke and Duchess of Anhalt-Dessau–
who has given me this letter of
introduction to give to you.
BURNOUF
(glances at letter
quickly)
Welcome to the Paris of turbulence
and upheaval!
Burnouf, holding the letter in one hand and sweeping the
young Max into the drawing room with the other, keeps his eye
on his daughters who are horsing around and messing up the
stacks of paper everywhere, mixing in sheet music from piano.
MAX
Revolutionaries?
BURNOUF
No. Daughters! My little magpies.
MAX
I’d like to have daughters someday!
BURNOUF
Mignons! Back to work, girls! That
pile is Avestan, and that pile is
Old Persian.
Hindustani voices in the background arguing. Burnouf,

distracted, ignores them; he is playing with his fountain pen, Max following him out onto his balcony.
33.
BURNOUF (CONT’D)
Over there lives Karl Marx, over there Mikhail Bakunin! What is this pen? They say it will replace all writing utensils in the future! Have you ever–?
Max leans forward to examine the fountain pen. Burnouf accidentally squirts ink all over the street, and he tosses it like a hot coal.
BURNOUF
Tant pis! Who needs the future anyway? . . . eh, the past is good enough! I am working on the Sanskrit of this new Sutra, the
White Lotus of the Sublime Dharma! Le Lotus de la bonne loi. I
received it as a gift from an
Englishman, the naturalist Hodgson
in Nepal, and what are you working
on?
MAX
I am working on collating the
manuscripts of the Kathaka
Upanishad.
BURNOUF
Pourquoi?
MAX
For the love of Sanskrit!
BURNOUF
Amour veut tout sans nombre, amour
n’a point de loi.
Burnouf, impressed, and Max, return to the salon. Burnouf’s daughters are alphabetizing slips of paper on which Burnouf has jotted his thoughts for the day, along with citations and etymologies.
DAUGHTER #1
Papa, what language is this?
BURNOUF
Put that in the pile for Zoroaster,
mon cheri. Monsieur Mueller, I
warn you: the life of the
translator does not pay well!
Blessed are the translators, for

they do not eat well!
34.
MAX
I’m willing to live on hard-boiled eggs, bread, and butter, coffee, and . . .; well, this is the living on nothing, being nothing, and desiring nothing, which was the ideal of Meister Eckhart, nicht wahr?
BURNOUF
I am giving a series of lectures
dealing with the first hymns of the
Rig Veda Samhita–you should come
along–no one will probably be
there! Europe has yet to meet Asia-
-when it does–potassium and
phosphorus!
We see DWARKANATH TAGORE with an operatic flourish to his entrance, when he strides into the salon.
DWARKANATH
Who are you? Are you British?
Because if you are, I shall throw
you out of this salon by the scruff
of your red-coated neck!
MAX
British? I don’t even know–
DWARKANATH
So you DON’T worship Henry VIII?
BURNOUF
You mean the Pope with no clothes?
MAX
I don’t know English!
DWARKANATH
I don’t know what English is good
for, but cheating Hindu businessmen
wallah! The “Christians” at the
British East India Company are the
worst asuras to walk the Earth.
They have the audacity to call
their quarter million mercenaries
“employees” or “public servants”–
wait–I want to show you something–
Debendranath! Where are you?
DEBENDRANATH
Father, in here–I’m–

35.
DWARKANATH
Where is my collection of English
newspapers with all the instances
of Christian transgressions against
common decency?
DEBENDRANATH
It’s in all these portmanteaux,
remember?
DWARKANATH
(turns to Max))
Do you know what the English do?
They force poor Indian farmers to
grow opium at a set price, then
force poor Chinese farmers to buy
it illegally! Jardine Matheson &
Co is in on the killing.
DEBENDRANATH
Which, Father you have a share in .
..
Debendranath enters the salon, a bearded young man with a concentrated profile, an analytical expression of thoughtful reservation to his face, as if in a state of near embarrassment by his father’s outbursts.
DWARKANATH
So I’m a hypocrite too! I didn’t
say I was perfect. I am a
businessman. Will you stay out of
this it’s for a good cause: the
economic future of India! As Ram
Mohun Roy taught us!
DEBENDRANATH
Father, I can teach the young
German English if . . .
DWARKANATH
Then teach him the only thing the
English know: pounds, sterling,
pence, and the wealth of their
nation, bloody money-grabbers!–
What is your interest in India?
MAX
The Vedas.
DWARKANATH
The Vedas! Hah! Soon, those will
be up for auction like bales of
tea;

(MORE)
36.
everything is for sale in London!
Pound, shilling, pence–Purusha,
Shiva, Prajpati–it makes no
difference to the English! Don’t
sell your soul to the English, they
will only turn a profit on it by
selling it to the French!
INT. THE BIBLIOTHEQUE 17 ROYALE – DAY. 17
We see Max in the huge old library at the circulation desk, with slips of paper, waiting for a librarian.
MAX
Could I get a book here?
STANISLAUS JULIEN
Not from me, I only get up for
Chinese books. not Indian. Ask
Ernest! Hey, Renan! Another
Indian book for the German student!
ERNEST RENAN
(looking up from his
books: Josephus’
Histories, The Letters of
Pliny the Younger,
amused, perturbed)
Yes?
JULIEN
Can you get another book for
Burnouf’s young friend here?
Renan picks up the slips, disappears, and returns with a small stack of manuscripts. He brings them to Max at his table, small lamps, long tables with readers here and there who look up now and then when they hear talking. RENAN
Are you copying?
READER #1
(reading Victor Hugo’s Les
Orientales)
Shhh . . .
MAX
No I’m tracing, to eliminate
mistakes. I’m using this papier
vegetal over the manuscript, see?
DWARKANATH (CONT’D)
37.
Reader #1 stares at Max, who traces Sanskrit letters for

Ernest Renan, who becomes fascinated, although his boss, Stanislaus Julien, disapprovingly looks on.
RENAN
Interesting. I should use that
technique myself for Hebrew. Tell me, can you make a living at that, like a monk, translating? READER #2
(reading George Sand’s Mauprat, looks up looking annoyed and then exasperated at the sight of Renan talking)
Shhh . . .
BURNOUF
Max, I am going to Baron
D’Eckstein’s soiree tonight!
READER #3
(slams his book down, Lamartine’s
Poesies)
BURNOUF
Do you want to go with me? You can
meet Victor Hugo, George Sand,
Lamartine who will be there . . .
Reader #1 rolls his eyes. Reader #2 stops reading. Other
readers look up disturbed, but wait for answer.
MAX
I don’t have time, I have to study
READER #3
(loudly)
What! Are you are an idiot?
MAX
Shhh . . . I’m trying to read.
It’s so noisy in here. Please calm
down.
Ernest Renan nods in agreement, Burnouf leaves Max alone, and Renan leaves, warning readers to be quiet, or he will ask
them to leave.
DISSOLVE TO:
38.
INT. A GENERAL SHOP ON 18 THE STRAND – DAY. 18
We hear Beethoven’s Op. 129, Rage Over a Lost Penny. Max in a worn-out coat is squinting at the shilling and six pence in
the palm of his hand. The shop is an apothecary and general store, with shoppers. The door triggers a little bell. The
walls are lined with jars, chemicals, powders. Max
approaches the clerk, behind the counter.

MAX
I’m back.
CLERK
Oh yes, you are here to pick up
your . . . tin cup?
MAX
No, I’m here to pick up my eyeglasses.
CLERK
Glasses? I don’t think so. I
don’t see any eye-glasses on the
counter here. Who did you place
your order with?
MAX
You.
CLERK
Me? I think you need glasses!
MAX
But I can’t see the glasses without
my glasses, which I gave to you
along with one gold sovereign as
payment in advance.
CLERK
We have some very fine “bins” on
the shelf over there, but I think
you might have the wrong shop, you
might want to try the poor-house
for free meals, or . . .
MAX
(raising his voice)
I GAVE YOU A GOLD SOVEREIGN AS
PAYMENT LAST WEEK!
We see the same two peelers as before walk by the window, looking in, as the customers are fidgeting, and the peelers hear:
39.
MAX (CONT’D)
I HAVEN’T HAD DINNER FOR THREE
NIGHTS IN A ROW!
CLERK
Well, don’t make a spectacle of
yourself!
PEELER #1
Is there a problem here?
CLERK
This ‘ere ragamuffin claims to have
given me ‘is oglefakes, and wants

his supposed “money” back for to the chune of one gold piece! PEELER #2
Well, well, if it ain’t the cove of Granby Street. Begging for a meal in the shops now, are you? And swindling the locals with the old gave you a gold sovereign last week bit!
PEELER #1
And I suppose you’re still the
Russian Crown Prince making his
rounds stealing apples for the Tsar
Nicholas! Let’s go! Out you go!
MAX
Prussia! Not Russia! That man
made all that up, lying Englishman!
That was all the money I had. I am
a ducal librarian’s son, I am not
begging for a threepence! I am not
breaking any laws! I just want my
glasses!
CLERK
Now I s’pose you’re going to say
that you’ve been framed!
PEELER #1
They talk funny and steal apples,
these lazy Russian Prussians
traveling half-way round the globe
just so they can lie around London
here and speak in tongues.
MAX
Please help, someone!
40.
Max takes out a slip of paper with an address written on it (4 Carlson Terrace Street), and he hands it to Peeler #1. MAX (CONT’D)
Please! I can prove it! If you
take me here, to this address!
PEELER #2
Hoity-toity! Carleton Terrace!
Why not? If this is a red herring,
you’re going to Newgate or Bedlam,
whichever is closer, sooner.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. LONDON, CARLETON 19 TERRACE – NIGHT. 19

We see the two peelers, on either side of Max, holding him up like a drowned rat on the front stoop of some very wealthy apartments in a rich area of London. A gala is in progress.
The door opens and the Archbishop of Canterbury is leaving. The Duke of Wellington emerges after him and gets into a carriage. The peelers look taken aback. A servant notices
them and wonders what they are doing, standing speechless on the front stoop. BARON VON BUNSEN walks by the foyer and sees Max and the police escort.
BARON VON BUNSEN
Ja?
MAX
Baron von Bunsen? My name is Friedrich Max Mueller. BARON VON BUNSEN
Oh of course! The King’s sister
wrote me that you would be coming!
Good timing! You just missed the
Duke of Wellington, but Sir Robert
Peel is still here! Sir Robert! I
believe your men are here to see
you!
We see the two peelers back-pedal, tipping their hats, bowing
and scraping, running down the street as fast as they can.
BARON VON BUNSEN (CONT’D)
But where are they going? They
just got here.
MAX
I don’t know. To Newgate or
Bedlam, whichever is closer.
41.
SIR ROBERT PEEL comes to the door and sees his peelers tear
off down the street, turn the corner, and vanish.
FADE TO:
EXT. HONG KONG’S VICTORIA HARBOR 20 – NIGHT. 1852 20 Full moon over the bay. Anchored sailboats, sloops, and
boats gently rocking in the dark. We see the harbor, the
British East Indiamen ships anchored there, the dock is
slightly active with workers and coolies. We hear the waves
lapping against the hulls. British flagship “Arrow” is in the
harbor.
21 INT. HONG KONG CHRISTIAN MISSION HOUSE – DAY. 21 We see Pastor Legge lighting a candle. We see Legge
superimposed on images of Legge, lighting a candle, over and
over again in super-imposed blurs, because every day after
only several hours sleep, he gets up and walks to his desk to

translate. A humid haze: floating around as if underwater:
his motto engraved on rosewood: Nulla dies sine linea. His table, his pen, his paper, his inkstone, his manuscripts, his scholar’s stone, floating. Five copies of his translation of
The Rambles of the Emperor Ching Tihin Keang Nan sit there in English. Legge looks at the Four Books and Five Classics in Chinese, adrift. Legge is actually in bed, covered with
leeches, cups of blood. He is bedridden with a malarial fever. The room is spinning as if he is on a raft, floating down the Pearl River.
LEGGE
The fever is no better today, Isabella. The bleeding . . . hard
to get up . . . not a grain of sand
can be wasted . . . Isabella, have
you seen my glossary of Hok-keen and Cantonese dialects? Don’t tell me I left it at the Mission House
in Malacca, I’m at loose ends– everything is spinning–where are we?
MARY ISABELLA (O. S.)
James! We are in the new Crown Colony, living at another Mission House in the rolling hills of Hong Kong, remember?
42.
LEGGE
I remember that it was a tainted spoil from the immoral Opium War– unfortunately! And a haven for every kind of riffraff and
scoundrel that ever scud the high seas.
MARY ISABELLA (O.S.)
James!
LEGGE
(picking at the leeches on his temples and arms)
My fellow brothers in Christ like Hong Xiuquan, inspired by Shangdi, and his missionaries are fighting
like tigers to win paradise. I
mean, fulfilling British prophecy, “they shall come from the land of Sinim,” I do not know how to think

straight today . . . I’m so thirsty
. . . whether to paraphrase or to
metaphrase: one wrong word could be
an issue of blasphemy,
excommunication, or even exorcism.
Is the Chinese word for God best
translated as: is it shen, di, or
shangdi? Shangdi! Life or death
to us, we sojourners in Babylon . .
. we children of God . . . are not
the children of the Emperor!
MARY ISABELLA (O.S.)
(speaking with difficulty)
It might take several Councils of
Nicaea to settle . . .
(groans, cries)
LEGGE
(tries to stand up, swoons)
I told my congregation Sunday to
drop shen and switch to shang di,
as the best way to render “Elohim”
or “Theos.”
MARY ISABELLA (O.S.)
Another blessing . . . brought into
our . . . blessed world.
We see Mary Isabella stagger into the room, giving birth, in labor; she falls to the floor.
43.
LEGGE
(jumps out of bed)
What’s wrong, mother?
MARY ISABELLA
James! Something’s wrong, the
pain! The blessed event! God has
blessed us! I’m dying. I am with
Christ. His light. In paradise.
(she dies)
Legge runs for help, runs back, half-dressed, covered with leeches. Dead, Mary Isabella’s labor continues, pushing out a dead baby, which Legge holds, while he is in complete shock, covered with leeches and trickling blood.
LEGGE
(whispers, cradling dead
baby)
Mary Isabella!
EXT. CHINESE 22 VILLAGE – DAY. 22

HONG XIUQIAN arrives on a mule cart. He stands on a small platform, surrounded by disciples, speaking to a circle of peasants and merchants at the edge of town by rice paddies. Sun is out and shining.
HONG XIUQIAN
I am Jesus’ younger brother, and I
have come to overthrow the Q’ing
Dynasty. To establish a state
based on Shang Di. The Manchu
devils have taxed us to death; they
have raised the rents over our
heads. They have plunged us into
poverty. They live in luxury
smoking British opium.
PEASANT #1
Who is this Jesus?
PEASANT #2
Weren’t you listening! Jesus is
the man who was not born of a
woman. He is the son of a god, but
not the son of a goddess. He–
PEASANT #1
What did he invent? The wheel?
PEASANT #3
He didn’t invent anything, he was a
wise man.
(MORE)
44.
He was captured and allowed himself
to be nailed to a tree by his
enemies, because he loved them so
much.
We hear horses, the galloping of soldiers on horseback. Peasants #2 and #3 skedaddle. Hong Xiuqian darts into a hut that has an underground shelter.
PEASANT #1
But–a wise man loves his enemies?
What if his enemies are really
stupid? Hey where is everybody
going–
Q’ING SOLDIERS
(shouting)
He’s here! Where? Over there,
running. No, that’s not him.
Q’ING SOLDIER #1
Close enough!

Q’ing soldier #1 swings sword, decapitates Peasant #1’s head, which THUDS in the dirt toward Peasant #1’s son running toward his father. Q’ing Soldier #1 dismounts to place the head in a jute bag, but boy grabs his father’s head first. Explosion. Another soldier has fired a bullet into Peasant
#1’s head, shattering it, spraying blood on Q’ing Soldier #1. Boy runs to mother.
Q’ING SOLDIER #2
That’s not him you idiot! He got
away. Now you’re really going to make us look stupid, you idiot! Q’ING SOLDIER #1
Duibuqi!
EXT. OXFORD UNIVERSITY, 23 ENGLAND – DAY. 23
We hear Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony, 4th Movement. We see from a bird’s eye view: the spires of the orange and cream
brick colleges of Oxford University. Stained-glass vaulted
dining halls, chapels with medieval minarets and gables. Subfusc-gowned professors hurrying in opposite directions
across quadrangles, the clock towers looking out over the
perfected lawn grass.
DISSOLVE TO:
PEASANT #3 (CONT’D)
45.
INT. MUELLER’S 24 APARTMENT – DAY. 24
Cramped Oxford University apartment. Max alone at his desk, swamped with letters, correspondence, manuscripts.
Newspapers. He is sorting mail, pulls out a letter from
William Russell. Then he looks at the galleys, just back
from Oxford University Press for correction.
MAX
Queer. My proofs are being
corrected! By whom? And here is a
query about Devanagari? Odd’s
sods. What the devil! Corrected
proof sheets and queries?
25 INT. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINT ROOM – DAY. 25 We hear printing presses slamming down on the revolving drums
of paper. Max knocks but can’t be heard. He pokes his head
in the door, looking around. We see a bushy-bearded printer
wipe his inky hands on his inky apron then wipe off sweat on forehead creating a big ink stain on his face.
PRINTER
Are you looking for someone?
MAX
I am looking for my editors. They

seem to know Vedic Sanskrit! PRINTER
That could only be me!
MAX
How is that you happen to know Devangari, sir?
COMPOSITOR
Dave and Gary? Can’t say as I’ve ever met those two blokes! Are they Siamese twins, attached at the hip, like Chan and Ken?
MAX
No, Devangari is the name of the
script of the alphabet.
COMPOSITOR
I only know what I’m used to. I
can only use my one arm so every
time I reach for a letter, I also
anticipate the next letter. That
way, I don’t have to get too tired!
(MORE)
46.
I know that certain letters cannot
follow other letters without
pulling me a muscle, and it starts
a-twinging. So every “d,” for
instance if followed by a “t,” is
changed to a “t.” If it feels
wrong in me tendons I know it’s a
typo. And if you’ll excuse me I
must get on with my job.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. LAWN PARTY, HOME OF DEAN LIDDELL 26 – DAY. 1849. 26 We hear Handel’s Harp Concerto, 1st Movement. Oxford
students vie with the Cambridge boatsmen sculling down river.
Boats on the Thames, a garden party in progress. CLOSE UP of kingfishers diving for perch. Genteel ladies, men in suits
and ties, on the front lawn of the house of HENRY LIDDELL,
Dean of Christ Church; he is a tall imposing figure grave as
the day is long. The Prussian Minister, Baron Von Bunsen,
arrives with Max. BENJAMIN JOWETT, another Oxford don, is a chubby, sort of bemused kind-looking man with a wide and
broadly bald head, with side gray hair.
LIDDELL
Welcome to my humble home! Deputy
Taylorian Professor of Modern

Languages Mueller! And Ambassador Von Bunsen!
MAX
It is an honor to meet the Dean of Christ Church, co-author of the famed Liddell-Scott Greek-English Lexicon.
LIDDELL
This is my wife, Mrs. Liddell, and
my daughters, Lorinna, Edith, are–
here, and Alice?
MRS. LIDDELL
I believe she is out punting on the
river with Professor Dodgson,
again.
COMPOSITOR (CONT’D)
47.
LIDDELL
Take my arm and I shall introduce
you to my friendly company:
Minister William Gladstone, Mathew
Arnold, Benjamin Jowett, the James
Froudes, the Charles Kingsleys, and
Georgina Grenfell.
Max and GEORGINA go off together, leaving Bunsen with the Liddells. On the river, herons, coots, gulls, mallards, mandarins. Gardens of bluebells, buttercups, and red and yellow tulips. From hedgerows servants bring lemonades and ginger-beers and cucumber sandwiches back and forth. Max waves them off.
GEORGINA
And a Rig Veda what is a Rig Veda,
a kind of boat? It sounds like a
big steamboat!
MAX
A steamship, rigged out with
tourists holding Baedekers? In a
sense!
MAX (CONT’D)
Let me show you my work!
Max proudly sports the folio-size first volume, bound in marbled boards.
MAX (CONT’D)
Here is a first presentation copy
of the first volume of the Rig Veda
Samhita, which will be my life’s

work. At this rate, only twenty
more years to go!
Max shows off the frontispiece in Sanskrit, where he gives
the translator’s name in Sanskrit as “Bhatta Moksha Mulara.” GEORGINA
It’s beautiful! Look at that
scripture! The lettering! You
wrote it?
Max blushes.
MAX
I copied it, so I “wrote” it, but
it did not originate with me.
(MORE)
48.
The Hindus call it “sruti,”
divinely inspired, unwritten,
eternal.
GEORGINA
What is it about?
MAX
It consists of 108 hymns to the
Hindu gods, it’s about being Hindu,
I guess, it’s about, well, in the
form of the Advaita School, it’s
about the closest way to our Lord I
have found outside Christianity.
The other schools border on
animism, polytheism, fetishism . .
.
Georgina blushes. Monier Williams, along with CHARLES DODGSON and ALICE LIDDELL, have gotten out of a small boat, next to Georgina and Max on shore. They walk up from the riverside, Alice chasing a bunch of rabbits.
WILLIAMS
(walking past Max toward
Bunsen)
I am sure you know all about:
“outside Christianity”! What have
we here, a Broad Church Liberal
convention? I don’t see Arthur
Stanley or Mark Pattison! Charles,
why did you bring me here?
CHARLES DODGSON
I thought you might want to try the
Liddell’s famous ginger beer? or
lemonade? Or both? Or neither?

But not neither nor both at the
same time–that would be a spot of bother, wouldn’t it?
JOWETT
Logic is neither a science, nor an
art, it is a dodge, son.
CHARLES DODGSON
(grudgingly ironic)
The Jowler gets a counter.
BUNSEN
(turning to Dean Liddell
and Gladstone)
MAX (CONT’D)
(MORE)
49.
Minister Gladstone, I have taken Max under my wing, and I will see to it that he doesn’t have to work
for the inept Company, so as to continue his work.
WILLIAMS
(butting in)
I happen to work for the Company. Sir, the British East India Company is not inept to the British! It is
only the greatest corporation in
the world has ever seen! Only an outsider would negative it!
Actually, it is the British who
have the Aryan know-how and patience to teach their own Aryan children how to govern themselves. MAX
(joining up with Bunsen)
So you are saying that before the Battle of Plassy, the Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Parsees, Jains, and Buddhists never knew how to govern themselves?
WILLIAMS
Obviously not! Every ten miles you meet another language, and every twenty a new religion. Professor Dodgson I shall leave you here, I
am off to London for a meeting with the great Macauley! He doesn’t buy

into the woolgathering of the
“sacred East,” or the “peaceful coexistence
of religions.” Or German
Idealist flapdoodle!
LIDDELL
(ignoring Williams)
They say that you and Prince Albert
are the new German clique. Now
with young Max, it’s a triumvirate.
BUNSEN
He’s still learning his table
manners, the other day he misused
his table-knife, stabbing his
pastry, scattering flakes all over
the Duke of Wellington.
BUNSEN (CONT’D)
50.
JOWETT
The Iron Duke probably witnessed
worse on his Iberian campaign. But
how does Max plan to publish this
massive work of Sanskrit?
BUNSEN
Well I told the Company Board of
Directors, how would it look if
England did NOT produce the sacred
books of India in translation? What
could the Company say? They need
good publicity. In a sense, if
they foot the bill, instead of Max
working for the Company, the
Company will work for him!
MAX
(not listening closely to Bunsen)
I will write you Georgina!
EXT. CAMBRIDGESHIRE 27 – DAY. 27
We hear Musetta’s Waltz from Puccini’s La Boheme. Autumn fens, bogs, moors. Hiding in a hollow beech trunk, adjusting
a floppy, wide-brimmed hat and ragged clothes, a red-haired boy, EDWARD PALMER, espies with his blue eyes, which look barely open: a Romani camp, pots over campfires. He affixes
a fake, putty nose. Palmer creeps forward over a fallen
trunk and in the autumn leaves, his eyelids seem enormous, heavily lidded with a tiredness, bending his willowy frail
body. He pulls his hat down over his eyes. He stumbles
“lost” into the Romani camp. He approaches one campfire. We

see two caravans, with colorfully painted pretty cabins on wagon wheels, into which small ladders lead. Well-tanned women in shawls, head-scarfs, boots, and pipes. A covered wagon is pulled by ponies. Tents here and there. Tinkers are tinkering. A mother is nursing.
PALMER
‘cuse me, can you p’int me in the
di-rec-ti-on of Glasgow? Be a good
chappie!
ROMANY #1
Where is your family? Is your
family in Glasgow?
PALMER
Ain’t nuthin’ in Glass-glow!
51.
ROMANY #2
(in Romani)
Is he running away from home?
PALMER
I have an aunt in Cambridge, but
she is half mad. Swooning fits,
guv’nor! Whenever she reads a
little ditty by Southey she falls
into a ditch! Point me toward the
Highlands?
The Romani look suspiciously at the lad. The Romani point North, but the boy heads South.
ROMANY #1
(in Romani)
Where is the hedge-crawler going?
That’s the wrong way! He must be
drunk!
PALMER
(in Romani)
I want to go to London, I don’t
want to go to Glasgow. I will get
drunk in London, not Glasgow.
ROMANY #1
Where did you learn Romani?
Palmer takes off hat.
PALMER
From Romani! Where else?
ROMANY #2
(chuckles, tends iron
kettle)
Hey, Gorgio, you’re crazy! Are you

hungry? Have a seat!
EXT/INT. SLIDE SHOW: SEPOY MUTINY. 28 MONTAGE. 1857 28 SLIDE SHOW: Indian troops in barracks. Enfield rifles,
Minie balls. Sepoys looking at their new gunpowder
cartridges, muttering, murmuring. One sepoy almost bites the
cartridge, the others prevent him. East India Company
officers demonstrate the use of the new cartridges in the new
rifles. Sepoys ask questions. They point at the ingredients
of the cartridge paper. What is it? British officers SHOUT
in sepoys faces. A sepoy shoots at his commanding officer.
Ordered to arrest him, other sepoys do nothing, refusing
orders. We see cantonments on fire.
52.
We see British officers’ and families’ quarters burning. We
see hundreds of sepoys, lined up, strapped to canons,
gunpowder poured in. One sepoy is secured with thick ropes
so that his stomach covers the bore. We see the fuse
lighted. The sepoy EXPLODES so that his guts fly everywhere,
including the next sepoy to be blown apart. We see British
officers nearby along with Monier Williams on chairs sitting
for a tiffin and tea. Williams is reading the Illustrated
London News, headlined, INDIAN MASSACRE.
INT. EAST END TAVERN, THAMES RIVERSIDE 29 – NIGHT. 1858 29 We hear Mozart’s Piano Concerto 21, 2nd Movement. Snow is
covering a dram-shop, melting into the flowing Thames and
night. Perched like hawks on the bar, a crowd of foreign
sailors are bending their elbows. Lascars from India.
French sailors and Italian exiles fighting, swearing,
smoking, drinking, arguing politics.
FRENCH SAILOR
Napoleon III is supporting
Garibaldi.
ITALIAN SAILOR
Only to show the Hapsburgs who is
boss.
French soldier shrugs.
PALMER
(in Italian)
Magic tricks? Card tricks?
Mesmerism?
Palmer is going table to table doing magic tricks. He
thimble-rigs a gull with three cups and a pea at one table.
At another, he does the same trick with the threepence taken
from a sailor’s pocket. He performs three card monte at
another table. He does card tricks on demand. Each table
spins with a different dialect: He hypnotizes a madam

(Prostitute #1 twelve years later) on a little stage. She
stands up and holds her hands and prayer and kneels down
praying. Everybody laughs. Palmer snaps his fingers.
Roman, Florentine, Sicilian, Venetian. Italians applaud,
cheer, jeer. A dwarf makes music from a mandolin, while
Palmer plays a tambourine, Romani #1 plays a violin. Noisy
banter, waiters and sailors fight over the two prostitutes
(the younger ones from Granby Street). We see SAYYID ABDULLAH from Oudh,a Hindustani-speaking Muslim, at a table. Palmer approaches saying hello in Italian and French.
53.
SAYYID ABDULLAH
You have quite the skill in
languages! What college are you
studying in?
PALMER
(performs card tricks
while they talk, shuffles
decks)
College? I can drink right here.
Why go out of my way? Well,
selling wine is not very
interesting either, the life of a
vintner’s clerk is not all that
enthralling, or maybe it is, that’s
the problem!
SAYYID ABDULLAH
Well, what do you want to do? You
have no parents?
PALMER
No, but I have an interest in Hafeze
Shirazi at the moment:
Palmer quotes a Hafez’ verse in Persian.
“I would give you Bukhara and
Samarkand/For the black mole on her
cheek.”
SAYYID ABDULLAH
Why would you do that?
PALMER
I don’t know, but it would explain
why I never have any money.
SAYYID ABDULLAH
I know the son of the Rajah of
Oudh, I might get you into
Cambridge–if you’re that good!
PALMER

‘allo, does anybody at this
Cambridge speak Arabic? That would
be an arrow in my quiver!
SAYYID ABDULLAH
I don’t know anymore, I dropped
out. I couldn’t keep up with the
drinking.
(MORE)
54.
When I was there, there were a
total of three Muslim students.
They probably went home, it’s more
of a private club than a public
college!
INT. HONG KONG MISSION 30 HOUSE – DAY. 1856. 30 Kitchen table. Cook puts bread on the table. We see Legge,
his second wife, HANNAH, his assistant WANG TAO, and the mission house cook and servants.
LEGGE
(reading aloud from a
letter)
Hannah! A letter from Max Mueller!
He reviewed my translations.
Greatly admires them! Does the Tai
Ping rebellion continue? Millions
and millions dead? British and
French troops. Lord Gordon?
Servant puts down the bread and butter in a wicker basket, right in front of Legge, who digs in and spreads butter on
his white bread roll. Servants seem nervous. House cook slinks off.
WANG TAO
(looks at the bread basket
hungrily)
Is this Lord Gordon a great man?
LEGGE
Wang Tao, I am unable to regard
Kongzi as a great man, much less a
man of war like Gordon.
Legge bolts a chunk of buttered bread.
WANG TAO
But you know Kongzi was a great
man!
LEGGE
Being a pastor with my own flock at
the Union Church, I cannot equate

anyone with Jesus Christ. I think that once I can instill in the mind of the average Chinese peasant a sense of his own sin, the average Chinese peasant will come around. SAYYID ABDULLAH (CONT’D) 55.
We see the house cook lay food on the table, which is more traditional rice and vegetables for Wang Tao. Again the house cook seems shaky.
LEGGE (CONT’D)
Bread, civilized food! No more
barbarian noodles!
The house cook is acting odd as he readjusts the freshly cooked bread and butter in front of Legge, while re-setting the noodles in front of Wang Tao.
LEGGE (CONT’D)
I forgot! Hannah! Come to lunch!
We thank the lord for the bounty we
are about to receive.
HANNAH
(hurries in, crosses
herself, sits down)
LEGGE
Wang Tao, we may thank the Lord for
a basket of the Lord’s bread. And
let us count our blessings because
the Lord has helped us find a
publisher for the Four Books!
HANNAH (O.C.)
Who has blessed us with this good
fortune?
LEGGE
A wealthy merchant in the employ of
Jardine, Matheson and Company!
WANG TAO
Isn’t that the name of the British
purveyor of Indian opium? A
merchant?
LEGGE
(chokes)
Well, Joseph Jardine, to be more
precise, is the owner.
HANNAH
James! That is a sin! You cannot
accept the blood money. That is

not acceptable in a Christian
household. Opium is poisoning. Oh
no, we’re going to hell for the
sake of . . . I can’t eat. I need
air. Isn’t there any more bread?
(MORE)
56.
Where is the house cook? That lazy
evil Chinese–
LEGGE
But Hannah, we must compromise
sometimes, in the interests of . .
. in the interests of . . . I don’t
feel good either . . .
We hear a knock on the door. A MISSION OFFICIAL with two coolies carrying the official’s luggage enters.
MISSION OFFICIAL
Reverend Legge, I’m sorry to inform
you that this Mission will be
closing its doors for good within
the year. I am here to tell you.
What with the Rebellion going on
and on . . .
LEGGE
I thought as much. The rebellion
has gotten out of hand like a
forest fire. One devil went out,
seven came in. I . . . I . . . I
have a fever or something, is it
the malaria back! Is there a
doctor? Tell the cook to go get a
doctor! I haven’t felt this sick,
Hannah, since I took that tour of
Beijing . . . ran out of food, and
ate mulberry leaves. Wang, oh my
God, did someone mix mulberry
leaves into my bread? Or butter?
Mulberries in butter? Oh my God .
. . the pain! It’s unbearable! I
think I’ve been poisoned. My
stomach . . . food poisoning!
Hannah, I think I’m dying. I need
air!
Hannah opens the window. Wang Tao gets up and points to where we see the cook run across the grounds into a group of mulberry trees and into the woods.

WANG TAO
The cook! He poisoned your bread!
LEGGE
Get a doctor!
WANG TAO
I will! After, I find a constable
and arrest him for murder!
HANNAH (CONT’D)
57.
LEGGE
No, get a doctor! I’m not going to
be able to give the sermon
tomorrow, that’s all. Forgive them
O Lord for they know what they do
and do it anyway!
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. A CHRISTIAN MISSION 31 HOUSE – DAY. 31
We see Legge recovering in bed, Hannah sitting next to him.
Outside the cook is hanging by a rope from a mulberry tree.
Two kids reach for his sandals. Their mother hurries them
away. She comes back on second thought and steals the
sandals for her husband.
32 INT. CAMBRIDGE LIVING ROOM OF EDWARD COWELL – DAY. 32 We hear Haydn’s Symphony #104, Fourth Movement. Cowell is
ushering in Palmer, and then they sit face to face over a
wide cluttered table, in a salon with fireplace–it is a
comfortable, but dark space with Morris peacock wallpaper and
overstuffed furniture, covered with shawls and lace.
Bookshelves furnish the walls. Botanical and floral
specimens lay about in cases all over the floor.
COWELL
Welcome, Edward. Don’t step on the
marigolds! This is for your
election to a fellowship, as you
know. Good luck. First, I’d like
you to translate Gibbon’s chapter
on Mohammed into Persian.
DISSOLVE TO:
PALMER
That wasn’t a problem. Could you
give me something in Arabic and
Hindustani too?
COWELL
Second I’d like you to translate
some passages from Rumi’s Masnavi,
Khondemir’s History, and Sauda’s

Urdu Qasidas–into English.
We see Palmer scribbling away, whistling.
DISSOLVE TO:
Palmer hands him the translations.
58.
COWELL (CONT’D)
And how is your Arabic?
PALMER
Fair to middling.
We see Palmer stare off into space as if remembering something.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. THE 33 PARIS ZOO – DAY. 33
We see the camels at the zoo. Palmer, as an interpreter,
with a wealthy patron, the son of the Rajah of Oudh, in Paris.
SON OF THE RAJAH
Palmer, do you think these camels
are Arab?
PALMER
(in Arabic to camels)
Kneel! Usjed! Ikh! Ikh!
We see the camels kneel at Palmer’s command. Palmer grins yes. A Zouave Moroccan soldier, having witnessed all this, approaches the pair.
MOROCCAN
Hello! Praise be to Allah!
PALMER
Hello!
MOROCCAN
Your clothes! They’re abominable!
How can you deny your heritage and
walk the streets of Paris like
that?
PALMER
What’s wrong with my clothes?
MOROCCAN
Nothing! But a Muslim should dress
like a Muslim!
59.
INT. MAX’S LONDON LODGINGS 34 – NIGHT. 1859. 34 We see a parlor of stuffed furniture. Oil paintings, a fatigued, figured, Persian carpet, cottage piano, simple brown wallpaper. Gasoliers light the room, centered by a table at which Max is talking to Jenny Lind, the “Swedish Nightingale.”

MAX
(serving tea)
I do have a sweetheart, Miss Jenny
Lind; her name is Georgina. It was
love at first blush. Just like Der
Freischutz! But Georgina’s father
is adamant about refusing her hand.
His two other daughters have
married very well–to two of my
friends in fact. One to James
Froude and one to Charles Kingsley.
So who then is Max Mueller to
compare with solid English stock?
A lowly German, professional
student! Even if my father,
Wilhelm, were alive now–Georgina
would still be forbidden to see me.
JENNY LIND
Wilhelm Mueller? Of Die
Winterreise and Die Schoene
Muellerin? What! I didn’t know
that! He was a friend of dear
Mendelssohn (tears up, pauses) . .
. the lyrics of Schubert!
She sings a snippet from Die Schoene Muellerin a capella. JENNY LIND (CONT’D)
You must come back to another
concert tomorrow night!
DISSOLVE TO:
35 INT. EXETER HALL AUDITORIUM – NIGHT. 1859. 35 Max, still heartsick, looking pale, enters the auditorium,
then musters up a certain assumed bravado. Georgina Grenfell, seated in the audience (next to her father), sees Max, gasps, and faints. Commotion. Georgina is spreadeagled in the aisle. Doctor in the house called for. Max runs over holds her hand, father moves out of the way.
60.
MAX
Le jour n’est pas plus pur que le
fond de mon coeur, sir.
Georgina wakes up.
GEORGINA’S FATHER
All right, you have my blessing to
marry. My word!
Georgina, smiling, is carted out of the auditorium by the ushers, father and Max following. Jenny Lind walks on stage

to applause, wonders what happened, and concert begins with
Schubert’s Die Schoene Muellerin.
FADE OUT.
EXT. OXFORD COUNTRYSIDE, THE 36 MUELLER HOME – DAY. 36 We hear Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite #2,
Movement 1. We see blackbirds SINGING, honey bees HUMMING in a garden before a timber and plaster Tudor-style cottage.
Georgina opens a kitchen window on fields and meadows:
wooden fences ride atop the hills, triangular plats of earth
alternating green and yellow, disappearing into the hamlets, filled with thick green-leafing trees on dirt roads. DISSOLVE TO:
37 INT. THE MUELLER DINING ROOM – DAY. 37
We hear Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite #2, Movement 2. Holland linen-covered dining room table, where Max, in shirt sleeves, is reading a letter from Russell,
talking to Georgina in the kitchen preparing dinner.
MAX
Georgina, my old friend William
Howard Russell sends his
congratulations to us. I think the
only good thing to come out of the
Crimean War was William Howard
Russell! He recently completed a
successful lecture tour on the
Siege of Sebastapol, and upset
another apple cart with his
coverage from Cawnpore, urging an
Anglo-Indian conciliation after the
rebellion. He has quite a talent
for reporting wars.
61.
GEORGINA
I expect him to be knighted
someday, there being no shortage of
wars. Max, I don’t think this meal
is turning out. I am so sorry. I
have never made this corn-of-thecob,
this American corn.
MAX
Well, let’s have a look. And I
must get around to hiring a maidservant.
Georgina enters, wearing a low cut with a plate full of cornon- the-cobs.
GEORGINA
I tried baking them and then

boiling them, but they didn’t
respond to my treatment.
Max looks at the cobs on his plate. He attempts to saw one
cob in half; while stabbing it with his fork, it falls on the
floor. Scotty the terrier grabs it. Max tries again with a
spoon to lift one to his plate.
MAX
Hmmm. There must be a way.
GEORGINA
No, Max. You butter the sides.
First you butter the corn so it
melts. Then you strip the corn off
like ribbons off a Maypole.
MAX
Butter the corn? Then you stand
the corn upright, like this, and
once it is lubricated you–
GEORGINA
The corn must be moist, as if in a
sheath of butter.
Georgina sticks out her tongue. Max loses focus and shaves
off kernels in all directions and the cob sprays butter in
his face. Georgina laughs, gets up, and stands behind Max so that her breasts are touching his back.
GEORGINA (CONT’D)
Let me show you how to handle your
corn-on-the-cob, Maxie.
(MORE)
62.
Thrust your knife into the butter,
like so. Then keep the cob
perfectly upright and erect.
Max is melting and getting hot under the collar. Georgina
sticks her tongue in his ear. Her low-necked dress is
suddenly revealing. She butters his corn-on-the-cob from behind and they kiss, Max over his shoulder.
MAX
Oh! The corn! The corn came out
perfectly, we should have it more
often!
Max and Georgina leave the dinner table for the stairs up to
the bedroom.
INT. OXFORD MEETING HALL 38 – NIGHT. 1860. 38
We hear Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. We see a room of professors in their gowns, facing a stage of professors in
their gowns. The professors are collecting ballots and

counting, sorting, and going over them with great care. Crowd
is milling about like an American political convention. We
hear small talk turn into a roar. CONVOCATION SPEAKER walks on stage.
CONVOCATION SPEAKER
Attention! The votes are counted.
ATTENTION! After careful
consideration, the convocation has
voted 2 to 1 in favor of Monier
Williams for the Boden Chair in
Sanskrit, once occupied by the late
Horace Hayman Wilson.
A cascade of applause. Hoorays.
CONVOCATION SPEAKER (CONT’D)
Monier Williams is a true Anglican
missionary, who has lived in
Bengal, and has been in a
missionary position there for–
WILLIAMS
(coughs with disgust and
sees others coughing)
CONVOCATION SPEAKER
–years–even while having to sit
tortuously through the treacheries
and savageries of the Sepoy Mutiny.
GEORGINA (CONT’D)
(MORE)
63.
So, by the stipulations
specifically noted by the
benefactor: the Chair “must
advance the cause of Christianity.”
Professor Mueller, though
qualified, regrettably, has not
advanced the cause of Christianity
in India, as much as the judges
should have preferred, and
certainly not as much as Professor
Monier Williams has performed.
Professor? A word or two?
We see Williams in the audience begging off with false
modesty his supporters. He waits for more encouragement, and overjoyed he sits back down. Others prod him, waving him onstage. He stands up humbly bows, hits his head on the back
of the head sitting in front of him; awkwardly he can’t get
past peoples’ legs in the seats. He limps on stage with a

twisted ankle and a red bump in the middle of his forehead. WILLIAMS
I am honored by this august,
August, owgoost body to have
secured finally the Boden Chair of Sanskrit. (pause) I guess Englishmen are too practical to study a language “philosophically.” (he waits for a laugh that doesn’t materialize) Anybody who has described religion as “a disease of language” probably is drifting beyond the buoys of common sense! And my colleague’s Theory of Turanian languages has been disproved by actual linguists. His theory of Aryan invasions has been disproved by actual historians.
His theory of comparative religions has been struck down by God himself, with your votes tonight! (applause) His Pollyannish view of the British Raj and its so-called Golden Age is nothing more than a exotic fairy tale. The fact of the matter is: there never was any
truth to back up the claims of
those who equate the spirituality
of what can only be called
“Hinduism” with our own
Christianity. In most of Hinduism,
there is only darkness, ignorance,
and superstition;
CONVOCATION SPEAKER (CONT’D) (MORE)
64.
not to mention a philosophy that
has created a soldiery too
effeminate to defend itself;
however, here and there, no
gainsaying, are hints of
Christianity in a kind of Hobson-
Jobson version. And whether you
are Utilitarian, Methodist, or
Whig, you must all agree that an “exotic” and “oriental” land of

India, placed on a pedestal (as my colleague would have it), is an India that cannot be managed underfoot! I know what India needs: a bull-whip and a whiff of the grape! My fellow academics, scholars, men of the church, Christian truth, under my watch, will continue to make inroads even into the dark minds of 200 million Hindus and 35 million Musalmans. Truly, the wisdom of India is in grateful hands! I thank you, and God bless.
The audience claps, cheers, huzzahs, stamps their feet.
Students carry Williams off stage, on their shoulders, in enthusiasm. We see Max, Georgina with baby ADA, Jowett, and Liddell quietly walk out, echoes of clapping, dying down to
one last CLAP.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. DEAN LIDDELL’S FRONT 39 LAWN – DAY. 1860. 39 We hear Mahler’s 2nd Symphony, 3rd Movement. CLAP. We hear mallets hit croquet balls that sound like clapping. We see
Max, Georgina (holding baby Ada), Jowett, and Liddell’s
family, wife and three daughters, playing croquet on the
front lawn of beech trees. Max can’t hit anything in a
straight line. Georgina, eating and drinking, is playing a
perfect game, and Lorinna, Edie, and Alice shriek with
laughter as Max’s Scotch terrier, Scotty, barks at Max’s
croquet ball and pushes it away from the wicket into a bed of daffodils. Everybody fusses over Ada. A nursemaid holds her, Ada wrapped in pink swaddling clothes. They continue to play croquet. Geese walk by barking.
GEORGINA
Scotty! No! Bad dog!
WILLIAMS (CONT’D)
65.
JOWETT
I know you’re disappointed,
Socrates, but it isn’t time to
drink the hemlock, or to leave your
rooster to Asclepius!
MAX
Benjamin, I’ve been knocked back
into a cocked hat! It is quite
incomprehensible! How could I have

been passed over? Isn’t it in Tom Jones The spineless Master Blifil wins the hand of Sophia? The English system is not based on merit, not like the German, which is more practical, pragmatisch! JOWETT
Frankly, Max, you ARE too German for Oxford. Mythology, philology, religion, linguistics–your scholarship is so scholarly no one scholar can follow all the
scholarly paths in your grove.
MAX
No offense, but the British have no
interest or understanding of the
Indian people. “Oriental” Jones
might as well have never existed,
so little influence has he had
here. Here, it is Empire first,
Education second.
JOWETT
The average Englishman can barely
understand Plato, and he will never
understand Hegel. He will never
even understand anyone who
UNDERSTANDS Hegel. Boney was
wrong: we are nation of landlords,
not shopkeepers. And the landed
gentry is not reading George Eliot
as we speak, or pondering the
Higher Criticism.
66.
GEORGINA
Once, after a lecture on religion
in Westminster Abbey, some of the
press threatened Max with
imprisonment for “brawling in
church.” And the next day we were
walking through town when an Oxford
shopkeeper who had heard about this
ran out of his shop and told Max
that when they send Max to prison,
Max could count on him for a hot
dinner from his table every week!
Everyone laughs–except Max, who tries to pick up Scotty, who

runs away trampling daffodils. LIDDELL
(ironically)
Only an Anglican can understand Sanskrit well enough to bring the self-deluded Hindu around to Christianity, the right Christianity.
JOWETT
We forget how Christianity straitjacketed philosophy at Oxford University for centuries. Giordano Bruno sneered that Oxford was the widow of true science. Have we caught up to Bruno’s sneer?
Shelley expelled for atheism! Our hide-bound century has brought with it: Cardinal Newman, the Oxford Movement, and the 39 Articles. A professor who claimed that Moses could not have narrated his own death lost his job recently.
MAX
What do I do now for work? I could emend all the mistakes in your Greek Liddell- Scott Lexicon. LIDDELL
I asked Scott if you could, and he said “no.”
MAX
Why would Scott say “no”?
67.
LIDDELL
Because, Max, you are a friend of Jowett, and Jowett recently got a promotion over Scott. That is the way it works, here at Oxford, or there in Whitehall and Westminster. MAX
I shall resign. Oxford doesn’t
even deserve the new German scholarship! They can read Newman until they drop dead from boredom and wish they were in hell just to feel alive and back in their
precious Middle Ages. The Idea of

a University? Indeed! GEORGINA
Max! The baby can hear! MAX
Georgina, I don’t have my work; . . . I . . . I will find work.
Max regains his composure.
MAX (CONT’D)
What can I say, except to chime in with Micawber: Something will turn up! And I have my family, our friends, and my simple faith in God.
SCOTTY
(emerging with a ripped up
daffodil in its collar)
Woof, woof.
Georgina wins the croquet game by hitting the final post.
INT. BACKROOM IN BRITISH 40 MUSEUM – DAY. 40 HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN and Max are sorting through what looks like crates of rubble. They are shards from excavations at
Troy.
SCHLIEMANN
Thank you again, Professor Mueller!
Without your help, I could not have
gotten my results published.
68.
MAX
(rolling up sleeves)
My pleasure! So what have we here?
SCHLIEMANN
I have separated Troy into four
different strata.
MAX
I see. So this case here is from
the lowest stratum?
SCHLIEMANN
Yes, sir.
MAX
But this shard is of a style that
could only be from the highest
stratum.
SCHLIEMANN
Que voulez-vous? It has tumbled
down! That happens.
Max putters around for awhile and opens another case of

fragments that is labeled “TOP LEVEL.” MAX
Heinrich, this piece of pottery in
Top Level case seems to be of a
style from the lowest level!
SCHLIEMANN
Que voulez-vous? It has tumbled up!
MAX
(eyebrows up, amused, quietly)
Hopefully we have destroyed Troy
for the last time!
EXT. 41 OXFORDSHIRE – DAY 41
Hoar frost on oak trees reaches out in networked branches and twigs. On a snowy lane, an American couple and the Muellers walk through snow to a cottage covered in snow, a trail of
smoke in the air above the chimney. Snow-laden beech trees, gnarled and ancient reaching out everywhere with snowy networks as far as the eye can see. Bare brown horse
chestnuts and hawthorns, covered with snow. Well-tended
gardens in blankets of snow. Max knocks on a thatch-roofed cottage door. JOHN RUSKIN opens the door.
69.
Ruskin is an imposing, solemn, humorless, thin, and darklydressed wiry man. Drawing room immaculate with tasteful
furniture, Arts & Crafts style, and stuffed with stuffed
furniture and paintings.
RUSKIN
(suspiciously)
Good afternoon, I am rather busy
right now, but come right in! I
don’t usually receive house-calls.
We see the two couples get comfortable in the medieval and Pre-Raphaelite furnishings of Ruskin’s home. We see original Rossettis, Burne Joneses, and engravings.
AMERICAN MAN
Professor Mueller was just
suggesting that all religions have
in some part a Christian message–
Ruskin fidgets in his horse-hair armchair, crosses his legs,
tends to the fire in the hearth. Sparks fly, he leaps back.
MAX
Amaransu, isn’t Brahman
transcendental in the same sense as
Kant’s ding an sich?
AMARANSU
Yes, Moksha, but any attempt to

bolster the message of Jesus who, we agree, preached universal truths for all mankind, can also be turned into its opposite. I think that
your Hindu sympathies can be misinterpreted by traditionalists as a backhanded attempt to– MAX
–knock Christianity off its pedestal?
AMARANSU
Yes, at this point in world
history, we Christians appear to be adherents of merely one amongst a host of other faiths! How can they all be reconciled to one Oversoul, without their being one nation? MAX
Do you think then to strive for the peaceful co-existence of all religions will inadvertently level them all? John, what are your thoughts?
(MORE)
70.
Our friend Arnold says the spirit
of the times is “sapping the proof from miracles.” And John? What do you think?
RUSKIN
It chanced that both you and your friend have happened to say things from which I deeply and entirely dissent, and which have reduced me to silence. So I bid you a good
day! Professor Mueller, and this acquaintance of yours, I . . .
MAX
I am so sorry. This is Ralph, and this is Lidian Emerson. You didn’t know we were coming? Didn’t you get my letter in the penny post? RUSKIN
No. I don’t read my mail. I
despise modern innovations.
FADE TO:

INT. HOME OF CHARLES 42 DARWIN – DAY. 42
We see Charles Darwin at his cluttered desk on his black
leather chair, which he wheels about on casters. On the
grayish wallpapered walls hang photographs. A fireplace and bare mantelpiece with a plain mirror above that. A huge
window overlooks the extensive gardens and flowerbeds beyond the red velour curtains.
DARWIN
I am aware of your work, Professor
Mueller–the Science of Religion,
in the spirit of the new
Wissenschaft. I find it
fascinating and enlightening.
MAX
And who isn’t overawed by your
insights into Nature? I only
object on one point: Language is
the gift of God. Language as Godgiven,
the only exception to your
theory of natural selection. Which
I have studied in your books and
Spencer’s. Not to mention tangling
with Tom Huxley.
MAX (CONT’D)
71.
DARWIN
You must understand the nature of
geological time, as Charles Lyell
did. We have not a sixth sense for
time. Human history is merely a
backyard garden sitting on the
slopes of the Himalaya mountain
range. Everything to us happened
yesterday. But given enough time,
language could have evolved
incrementally too, like eyeballs,
eyesight, vision, insight, even–
MAX
–the Vedas? But Charles, what’s
wrong?
DARWIN
Migraine! The only thing that
helps the megrims is sitting in my
backyard and studying earth-worms.
My dear Mueller, as I grow older
the less interest do I have in

matters of art, literature, and religion. I care only for earthworms, if earthworms had a religion I might worship right alongside a congregation of earthworms, a Providence of earthworms.
FADE OUT.
EXT. SYRIAN COUNTRYSIDE 43 – DAY. 1869 43
A caravan is winding its way across the dunes, two males and one female leading a train of Syrian servants. We hear the tinkling of bells around the camels’ necks. Palmer is with RICHARD and ISABELLA BURTON, out for a picnic. They are carting equipment, bedding, and food, and they proceed at a leisurely pace. The Sun is bearing down like beads of sweat
from the sky, and the heat is simmering over the sand in
mirages. The sky is bright and blinding. The caravan wears headwraps and kufis for protection from the obliterating sun. BURTON
(has a falcon on his wrist)
An Englished Quran is much to be
desired, Palmer. They’ve all been
hatchet jobs.
(MORE)
72.
The first European Quran was in
Latin translated in 1143 by Robert
of Ketton, but it wasn’t published
until 1543, and then it fell
“stillborn from the press.” Then
another Latin Quran by Marracci in
1698, and a French Quran by Andre
Du Ryer in 1647 . . .
PALMER
So the Quran has lain dormant to us
for 500 years until it was
translated into Latin; and then
another 500 years before it was
translated into French . . .
BURTON
The first English version was in
1649, by Alexander Ross, based on
Du Ryer’s French Quran. Ross did
not even know Arabic, how low can
you sink, and call yourself a
translator?

PALMER
And that version, no good?
BURTON
Alexander Ross, was possibly the
wrongest man to ever think!
Alexander Ross attacked Copernicus
for heliocentrism; Ross attacked
Thomas Browne for Browne’s
generally accurate theory of
crystals, Ross believed crystals
were “fossils of ice”; Ross
attacked William Gilbert for his
lack of recognition of the role
garlic played in hindering
magnetism; Ross thought William
Harvey’s theory of the circulation
of the blood a lunatic fantasy;
Ross lashed out at Spinoza for not
believing in the immortality of the
soul; finally he called Thomas
Hobbes an atheist, an
Anthropomorphist, an Arabian, a
Manichee, a Mohammedan, and a Jew.
PALMER
And the George Sale Quran?
BURTON (CONT’D)
73.
BURTON
The Protestant, George Sale, was
less hostile: but what was good in
Muhammadism was entirely ignored,
and what was not good was
exaggerated. Sale never mastered
Arabic, pure and simple. Although
his version was good enough to win
over Thomas Jefferson, Gibbon, and
Voltaire. Sale’s is not an
accurate version.
PALMER
Ma ya’rifsh al alif minnal madneh?
ISABELLA
He doesn’t know a big B from a
bull’s balls?
We see Palmer, Richard, and Isabella Burton, and servants making camp. Richard tends to his falcon. Servants tie up camels. Others are erecting tents, setting out mattresses.

Carpets, musnads unfurl. A tarbooshed cook is collecting
pots, pans, silverware. Another servant is arranging photographic equipment, trying to take pictures but his
clumsy attempts are not working and too slow. Meanwhile, the sunset looks like a juicy giant blood orange. Burton covers
up falcon and produces a jug of brandy and cups. BURTON
The Hawaytat Sheikh’s second born
son is getting married. How come I
wasn’t invited? Damn it, I am not Iblis! Don’t they know I’m the English al-Mutanabbi!
The horse, the night, and the dunes are my friend/As well the sword, the spear, the paper, and the pen! PALMER
El ‘abdu yudabbir wa ‘llahu yukaddir–L’homme propose et Dieu dispose.
BURTON
Care to dispose of some brandy? PALMER
(examining his pistol)
Na’am, Dick! As soon as I figure out the action on this pistol. Why do they call you Ruffian Dick, Ruffian Dick?
74.
BURTON
Mrs. Grundy comes in all shapes and
sizes. Sometimes she wears
pantaloons and is the Chair of a
Department, sometimes she prattles
twaddle for career or fame.
Palmer throws a pan in the air and shoots it. We hear DING! PALMER
It works! Cheers!
The party raises their cups to the sun going down. BURTON
Professor Mueller at Oxford had a
theory that the gods are
personifications of the weather; I
myself believe the gods are the
personifications of men themselves.
Men are fools, but falcons are
wise.

Burton sets down his cup and tends his falcon. PALMER
So glad I dropped into Damascus!
BURTON
And I will be glad to leave it!
The life of a consul is so tedious,
tedium vitae, wrangling with the
endless stream of braying jackasses!
PALMER
The Abdullahs and the Alis?
BURTON
No, I mean the Foreign Office.
Sebastopol, Delhi, New Zealand,
Afghanistan, a place called Africa,
do they ever go anywhere and
improve the lot of the inhabitants?
PALMER
Then Palestine will be another
British fiasco too. After I made a
complete survey of it, two miles to
the inch, walking from the Sinaitic
peninsula to Jerusalem, I don’t
know what they plan to do with it!
75.
We hear the wood crackling, sparks flying upward, smoke, and cooks cooking. They are frying lamb and onions.
PALMER (CONT’D)
(changing the subject)
You know, the dialects of the
desert are almost as fascinating as
the Bedawin who live there. I
asked one the other day why is this
one wadi called “Khabar”? Of
course, he said, with veiled
contempt, it’s to distinguish it
from the other wadis!
BURTON
They see you with your paper, pens,
and surveying instruments? Why
should they volunteer any
information leading to their own
eviction? They have their ears to
the ground at all times! They know
the order of things. Missionaries,
soldiers, landlords, masters. Tell
me, what is the Foreign Office up

to in Yemen? Surely discovering the Jebel Musa where Musa stood isn’t just for another footnote in the family Bible! Well, we will never know!
PALMER
Why?
ISABELLA BURTON
Edward, Richard has gotten himself
embroiled in another dust up with
officials over his breaking up a
ring of high-placed businessmen
charging 30% on loans to fellaheen,
poor folk, average Joes. We must
be moving on soon, as ever . . .
And you? Plans?
RICHARD BURTON
Isabella, you know I was completely
supported by the local al-Jama’ah
al-Isla’miyyah. But the Foreign
Office is in cahoots with the
usurers! They’re going to turn me
out, the foreign devils.
76.
PALMER
Journalism, Isabella! I could work
for The Times like William Howard
Russell, covering the war in the
States! I am certain I am not
teaching undergraduates their
Alifs, Bas, and Djeems!
Insha’Allah!
Burton looks up at the sky, reaches for a cage, and removes his pet falcon. He releases the falcon, which captures a carrier pigeon, and drops it at Burton’s feet before landing. Burton unravels the paper, reads it:
RICHARD BURTON
It says: “The Englishman Palmer has
arrived in Damascus to meet with
the British Consul Burton.”
Laughter. Fire blazes. Underneath the stars of a cloudless sky, we see their tobacco smoke rising.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. HOME OF 44 MAX – DAY. 1875. 44
We hear Beethoven’s String Quartet #14, 5th Movement (Presto). Smoke rising up a chimney. Max is in his living

room by the fire and fireplace. He is reading The Times; he is hidden by the paper, until he suddenly thrusts the paper down, scaring off three daughters and one son, and old Scotty.
MAX
No! No! No!
He throws The Times into the fireplace. It blazes upward, unfolds, and rolls toward the carpet. Max leaps up to damp out the sparks.
GEORGINA
What was that? Max, are you all
right?
MAX
(stamping out sparks)
Monier Monier-Williams! It’s in
the paper! The churchy rogue has
even changed his name to Monier
Monier-Williams! One moaner isn’t
enough? Georgina! Oxford has
AWARDED Williams a D. C. L., an
honorary degree in Law! In LAW?
(MORE)
77.
That was purposely meant to snub me-
-out of spite. I’m going to go
through the roof; evidently I am a
nobody at Oxford, just another log
on the grate!
GEORGINA
Oh come now, Max, why?
MAX
Evidently I am not Oxonian enough
for Oxford, nor John Bull enough
for the Union Jack. The smug
insularity of this island never
ceases to amaze me! I am so sorry
Georgina, I know I have let you
down terribly. Your father was
right. I never could amount to
anything!
Knock on the door. It’s Dean Liddell with The Times in one hand, the Illustrated London News in the other.
LIDDELL
I read the news Max! Benjamin and
I have talked to certain people at
Oxford, and they are considering

offering you a special professorial chair in philology, reconstituted, so that you could share it with a deputy professor.
MAX
Have there been any objections to
that?
LIDDELL
Charles Dodgson, Vice Chancellor,
objected: he claims this
arrangement implies that the Chair
had been overinflated by half its
worth in the first place. And
then, who is the real Professor,
surely the incoming Professor is
the real Professor . . . You see,
he objects to two professors
sitting on one chair on logical
grounds; nevertheless, despite this
reduction ad absurdum, which is
only aimed at you because of me,
because my wife had to restrain his
advances upon our household, as it
were.
MAX (CONT’D)
(MORE)
78.
In any case, as Professor Emeritus,
you would retain your chair, with a
deputy in your place, and the
deputy would occupy both halves of
the chair in toto.
MAX
Academic politics! I’ve had
enough!
GEORGINA
Since when?
MAX
Since right now! My aim was to
learn what man is from what man
was. How has thought developed . .
. and it seems that it hasn’t: it
can’t!
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. MAX’S 45 DRAWING ROOM – DAY. 45
Max is writing, ink-well, ink-stand, paper weights, on a

portable writing desk on top of a side-table. Letters flying
like white-winged doves we see superimposed on the living room in a series of letters being written and flying out the window: “Dear Empress of India, Queen Victoria, Dear Frederick William IV, King of Prussia, Dear Maharajah of Vizianagram, Dear Chancellor Bismarck, Dear Prime Minister Gladstone,” and:
MAX (V. O.)
To Oxford University: I feel more and more that I am not wanted at Oxford . . . and the treatment I receive here is not exactly what I like. I am tendering my letter of resignation from Oxford University as of today.
DISSOLVE TO:
We see Max reading a letter.
MAX (V.O.)
“Dear Professor Mueller: My heart felt condolence on your situation .
. . I have inquired into
appointments at the Berlin Academy, but to no avail.
LIDDELL (CONT’D)
(MORE)
79.
The office of Chancellor Bismarck.” Georgina, we won’t be moving back to Germany anytime soon. I guess Bismarck has better things to do! Harumph!
GEORGINA
Max, a man of your talents and connections. Think! You are one
of the most well-respected and learned men, not just in Europe but in the world! Why fly into an emolumental rage over a lost penny? Those professors at Oxbridge, you know, are no greater than their own puffed-up opinions of themselves! You have so many wonderful Hindu friends. Kheshub Shundar Sen for one! You could teach in Calcutta, Bombay or Madras. Or Istanbul, or Paris with Renan; we can rusticate

elsewhere, it’s not the end of the world, it’s just Oxford. A cattle crossing!
MAX
(lost in thought)
Eureka, Georgina! I know how to
bury Monier Monier-Williams! I
should like to collect and publish
all the sacred writings of mankind,
create a kind of “bibliotheca
sacra,” and I have had my eyes on
James Legge’s Chinese Classics for
quite some time. Like Diderot’s?
Like Brittanica, Grimm’s
Dictionary, or the Kang Xi–but a
work that represents the world’s
most profound beliefs; it would be
a first, and it would make Williams
a last! We start with: two Hindu
volumes, two Chinese volumes, one
Arabic volume, and one Persian . .
. and then . . . Williams, your
academic Establishment charade is
over!
INT. BODLEIAN 46 LIBRARY – DAY. 1876 46
We see the Bodleian Library. Max and Legge strolling through the stacks, and the shelves and shelves of books.
MAX (V.O.) (CONT’D)
80.
MAX
Say James, what became of your
three prize pupils?
LEGGE
Two of them went into ahem business
concerns, while the prize pupil
slinked off to Hong Kong like a
thief in the night to become a wellknown
thief in the night. How glad
he was to be back in the Hong Kong
underworld after a harrowing
experience in the world of
convention! I’ve since learned
that most of my converts were or
are members of criminal gangs in
Hong Kong.
MAX

But the best laid plans gang aft agley.
We see Legge thinking and nodding.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. A SHRINE, A GRAVESITE, 47 IN CHINA – DAY. 47 MAX (V.O.)
Your Yu Lun, Analects, was an echo of Epictetus. I admired your Great Learning, Doctrine of the Mean, and the Mencius.
We see Legge look down at the epitaph of Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit priest in China.
MAX (V.O.)
Your missionary work has been an
important aid to the introduction
of Christianity into China.
We see the gravesite of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit. We read
the headstone that marks his grave. Legge sets down his translation of five books: the Book of Songs, the Book of Documents, the Book of Rites, the I Jing, and the Spring and Autumn Annals. Legge’s face has notes of disdain when a Chinese family walks up with a ceramic urn and sets it down on the stack of books, places joss sticks in the urn, and
lights the incense sticks, which fill the air.
81.
Legge snaps out of it. He picks up the thread of the conversation quickly.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. BODLEIAN 48 LIBRARY – DAY. 48
LEGGE
Yes, my translations are out of the
traditional order, the I Jing
should have been first. I led off
with the moralistic Lu Yun, because
of possible gospel overtones.
MAX
In my mind only Chinese literature
comes close to the breadth and
depth of Indian literature. Now
the press is saying that Legge’s
Chinese Classics are a greater
contribution to Weltliteratur than
Mueller’s Rig Veda Samhita.
LEGGE
I know I am prosy and dosy–a
little pedantic for the masses;
also, I had some help. Wang Tao,

not to mention, Zhu Xi, Mao Qilin, Ruan Yuan . . . I translate for the Hundredth Man. The other ninetynine do not care for critical
notes. I want to create something that will be referred to hundreds of years hence.
MAX
Exactly! I think you deserve the leisure to complete the Chinese canon, which would require the Book of Changes and the Record of Rites. The Book of Songs, the Mencius etc. I want to install you in the first Chinese chair at Oxford. I wish we had such translations as yours of
all the sacred writings of the
world. I am trying very hard to
get a number of scholars together .
. . The costs could be absorbed by
Oxford University Press and the
Indian government is interested. I
have drawn up a prospectus.
Max hands Legge a copy of the prospectus.
82.
MAX (CONT’D)
And here I have lain out the
importance of restoring original
texts and their historical value to
future scholars, although many of
the texts are extremely childish,
tedious, if not repulsive . . . but
there they are, the Duke of Zhou’s
warts and all . . . if he had any
warts . . .
LEGGE
The Duke of Zhou had no warts.
INT. OXFORD BOARDROOM OF DIRECTORS 49 – DAY. 1876 49 Max, in his academic gown, is standing before an august
series of tables of seated gentlemen in gowns.
MAX
I thank all the Delegates for
coming, first of all. As you know,
I am here to propose a project that
would be unique and universal. I
am proposing an epic monument to be

built and housed by Oxford
University Press as an advancement
of sound learning and a provider of
work for junior scholars, even
considering its uncertainty as a
money maker. I intend to commission
the translation all the world’s
most significant religious texts,
outside the Hebrew and Pauline
traditions. Hindu, Chinese,
Arabic, and Persian would be
uppermost. First of all I should
like to contract the Reverend Legge- -recommended by the noted
Sinologue, Stanislas Julien, at the
College de France. Stanislaus
Julien, as the world’s expert on
Chinese, cannot speak it: I say
this only to demonstrate that the
study of languages is indeed in its
infancy. Haven’t I already chided
Oxford enough times already for its
refusing to found a Professorship
of Chinese?
BOARD MEMBER (MONIER-WILLIAMS) But James Legge is Non-Conformist, correct?
(MORE)
83.
And you know Oxford University has
never installed a Non-Conformist? Something only thinkable in this
modern corrupt age? The age of
anarchy and rebellion. . .
MAX
And you know, under the auspices of Professor Jowett that that policy
has been reformed?
WILLIAMS
(talking over Max)
Gentlemen, will our hiring of Legge
portend a new found enthusiasm for
the ancient Chinese civilization?
Then will Professor Mueller
suddenly see in the Chinese man
something “divine” and devise his

own brand of Christianity for them, not unlike the “Christianity” of Ulfilas, the Arian Bishop, the Bishop of the Goths, which is what you are, Professor Mueller!
MAX
I have never been called an
Ulfilas, Bishop of the Goths
before, but as “Ulfilas,” I do not
feel there is any danger of “overidealizing”
the world’s religions
at the very moment we are trampling
their shrines into the mud!
WILLIAMS
In any case, if we pursue this
canonization of outworn creeds, it
will be the beginning of the end
for Oxford as a university!
Highland Scots? What next? Irish
Catholics? Why don’t we just fill
up the Law Colleges with Gujaratis
in loin cloths and cede the Empire
altogether to the lying, hateful
little brown man of our most
beloved colony! I dare say!
INT. MUELLER’S DRAWING 50 ROOM – DAY. 1877 50 We hear Berg’s Violin Concerto, 1st Movement. Max is sitting stock-still in a rocking chair. The fireplace is burnt out,
just ashes and cold air coming down the flue blowing them at Max’s feet. The clock under glass has stopped at midnight. BOARD MEMBER (MONIER-WILLIAMS)
84.
Scotty the Scotch terrier is now too old and arthritic to
move, lying there with, head on paws, eyes open but not moving. The downdraft blows the fire screen over. GEORGINA
Max, you have to eat something, how
about just a breakfast roll and
some coffee?
MAX
Ada dead at fifteen? She was alive
and well two weeks ago? What is
the point of anything?
GEORGINA
Max, you have to get up, and not
give up.

MAX
“Let us die, in order that the old
may not weep for the young.”
FADE TO BLACK.
INT. THE MUELLERS’ DRAWING 51 ROOM – DAY. 1878 51 We see Max writing letters. Outside his paned window is snow
as far we can see, the frost on the window panes in
parabolas, the bare trees outside etched in black and white.
MAX (V.O.)
My dear Renan: I have experienced
a great loss, my daughter Ada has
recently passed on from a sudden
attack of meningitis. But the
Sacred Books of the East are safe;
I have sixteen translators at work
now. I quite share your feelings
of admiration for James
Darmesteter. I have reviewed his
book on Ormazd and Ahriman, and I
would like to secure him for the
translation of the Avesta. He has
quite amazed me with his knowledge
of Hebrew and Talmudic lore, not to
mention his French translation of
the Zend Avesta with commentary.
DISSOLVE TO:
JAMES DARMESTETER, a young man with wavy black hair, high forehead, in white shirt and trousers, is collecting popular
songs in Afghanistan, walking village to village;
85.
we see him writing down songs while an old Afghani plays a stringed instrument and sings, which we don’t hear.
MAX (V.O.)
I’ll need a translation from him of
the Vendidad, for Mazdaism’s ethics
and rituals. In the Vendidad, for
every good action there is an equal
and opposite evil action. Much of
the text revolves around hellish
punishments for taboo violations;
the fight between Airyaman and
Angra Mainyu continues to this day
and until the end of time. The
Zoroastrian formula is: Good
thoughts, good words, good deeds.
As such, the act of translation

should be considered as all three!
The wind howls, the snow blows over the snow-covered cottage,
the fireplace is glowing with burning oak logs. The glassencased
clock on the mantelpiece reads six o’ clock.
Georgina and a maidservant are cleaning silver, another
maidservant is bringing up food from the scullery. The three
children are studying by the fire. Max seems content,
adjusting a blanket over his lap. Scotty at his feet. Tree
branch taps on frosty window.
DISSOLVE TO:
We see EDWARD WILLIAM WEST in the cave temples of Elephanta, holding a torch that illuminates the shapely, sensuous stone
sculptures. This torch throws light on the notoriously
sensual sculptures.
MAX (V.O.)
I also have an ex-cotton press
manager from Bombay too, Edward
West, whose hobby it is to explore
the caves of Elephanta and copy
Pali inscriptions from the Buddhist
Kanheri caves when he can get away
from the Great Indian Peninsula
Railway. He will be translating
Zoroastrian texts from the Pahlavi
for me. He is another, like H. H.
Wilson, whose studies are
entertainments.
DISSOLVE TO:
Max picks up a poker and stirs up the oak log on the grate,
and sits down to write, contemplating the flames.
86.
MAX (V.O)
Georg Buhler, whom I have gotten a
professorship at the University of
Bombay has the unenviable task of
translating the Laws of Manu, after
William Jones. Buhler has
translated the first dictionary of
Prakrit into English.
DISSOLVE TO:
Ceylonese countryside surrounding a traditional village.
Shirtless farmers with white turbans guide bullock carts.
Inscriptions in Pali on statues abound along the road, where
THOMAS WILLIAM RHYS DAVIDS, a civil servant is engaged in a dispute over a fence with peasants. He points to the cattle
trampling the local fields, and points to the broken fence.

The peasants are complaining. We see an official British
civil servant approach Rhys Davids, reprimanding Rhys Davids. MAX (V.O.)
Another translator I have hired,
Thomas William Rhys Davids, was
framed for embezzling a small
amount of money, which he used to
mend a fence in Ceylon, which is
our gain because Rhys Davids has
come back to London to found a muchneeded
Pali Text Society. Rhys
Davids collaborates with Hermann
Oldenberg, who is introducing
Buddhism to Germany. Oldenberg
wrote the book: “Buddha: Sein
Leben, seine Lehre, seine
Gemeinde,” and I’m sure you know
that this is the book that gave
Friedrich Nietzsche his pessimistic
views of Buddhist pessimism.
We see Nalanda University in India MELTING DOWN from an idealized picture in the 12th century to a more realistic
picture of it as a ruined landmark in the countryside of the
19th century.
87.
MAX (V.O.)
Oldenberg and Rhys Davids are also
translating the Vinaya texts,
Vinaya, the books on monastic
discipline, the same books desired
by the Han emperor, who
commissioned Fa Xian to make the
pilgrimage to India, the same
“Journey to the West” of Wu
Chengen. So here is my grand or
grandiose plan: 49 volumes: 21
Brahmanic, 7 Theravad Buddhist, 4
Confucian, 2 Daoist, 2 Mahayana, 2
Islamic, 2 Jain, 1 Chinese
Buddhist, and 8 Zoroastrian. And I
still need a top-rate Arabist,
having used up young Darmesteter
for the Zoroastrian texts! In
closing, I am sorry to relate
that, for your naturalistic “Life
of Jesus,” in England you are now a

more hated public figure than
Spencer and Huxley combined, but I
am remaining, Your Dear Friend, Max
Mueller.
EXT. CAMBRIDGESHIRE 52 COUNTRYSIDE – DAY. 52 We hear Vaughn Williams’ The Lark Ascending. A sunny afternoon. We see Cowell and Palmer sitting in a meadow of ox-eye daisies, on a bluff of mossy rocks in the fen looking at a Persian manuscript, floral specimens in bags around Cowell’s feet.
COWELL
Is this manuscript of interest to
you? I got it in Calcutta. My
sister’s friend, Edward Fitzgerald,
translated it recently.
PALMER
The astronomer’s verses?
Interesting! But you had no
interest in translating it yourself
first?
COWELL
(looking at floral
specimens)
I translated Vararuci’s Prakrta-
Prakasha, and the Kusumanjali in
1864.
(MORE)
88.
After Professor Mueller got me a
job here, I’ve always been too busy
with teaching courses in Indian
philosophy, the Pali Jataka, the
Zend Avesta, and Sanskrit at all
levels. At the time, I thought who
would want to read the Rubiyat of
Umar Khayyam? Persian Sufi texts
have little appeal in their own
countries, how could they fare any
better here? Besides, I’m learning
Welsh to translate Dafydd ap Gwilym-
-now there’s a poet with a future!
MAX
(approaches out of
nowhere)
Cowell! Where’s my Buddha Karita of
Asvaghosa? Here I find you roaming

the moors with your young Romani friend, and I need an Arabist! I thought you had one for me! One of exceptional ability at that. To translate the Quran, fairly and evenly, without injecting the usual slanders, without the usual purpose of mistranslating it!
COWELL
(setting aside floral
specimens)
Max Mueller, Edward Palmer. Max,
this is Edward Palmer; he’s fluent
in Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic.
And yet, the gentleman likes rags,
dirt, tramping, and begging. A
curious taste; but some men are so! PALMER
I like to feel at home wherever I
go, that’s all! I have just
recently returned to Cambridge,
Professor Mueller–and I have just
translated the complete works of
Behaed din Zoheir of Egypt, the
first time ANY Arab author’s
complete works have been translated
into English.
MAX
Are you up for trying your hand at translating the Quran?
COWELL (CONT’D)
89.
PALMER
To that I say: “Among other signs
of God, is the creation of the
heavens and the earth, and the
variety of colors and languages.”
Wa min ayatihi Khalq al-samawat walard wa-ikhtilaf alsinatikum waalwanikum.” MAX
I will draw up a contract.
COWELL
Wait! Stop! You almost stepped on
a rare species of marigold. That
could have been catastrophic!
INT. LONDON 53 PARLOR – DAY. 1878 53

We hear Grieg’s Holberg Suite. We see a house party of wellto-
do Londoners. A housewarming party for ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, who sits in a Victorian living room toying with a microphone, whose wires are connected to a glass cage in
which a fly is buzzing. Next to Bell is a switch. Bell
looks out the living room window at the visitors and guests.
BELL
Ready?
We see Bell hook up the telephone receiver to the cage. When
he throws a relay switch, the buzzing of the fly, via wires
connected to a speaker in the back yard, sounds like an
elephant stampede. Screams, shouts. People running for the
garden gates.
BELL (CONT’D)
Everybody inside! Time for the
graphophone now!
We see Bell adjusting the cylinders so that the stylus will
cut into the wax coating that surrounds the cylinders.
BELL (CONT’D)
We need a volunteer to say
something! Can anyone here say
something?
We see the house guests retreat, shaking their heads.
HOUSE GUEST
Professor Mueller always has
something to say! Where is he?
90.
MAX
Here! Here! Say something? Let’s
see . . .
Max volunteers and steps up to the microphone attached to the graphophone, which has a huge bell-shaped speaker shaped like
an orchid. We see a cylinder rotate as stylus cuts
zigzagging grooves into it in sideways motions that
correspond to Max’s voice when Max speaks:
MAX (CONT’D)
(clears his throat)
Agni ile purohitam yagnyasya devam
rivigamhotaram ratnadhatamam . . .
Bell adjusts the graphophone for playback; then we hear a
scratchy version of Max’s voice, very far away.
MAX (CONT’D)
Agni ile purohitam yagnyasya devam
rivigamhotaram ratnadhatamam . . .
HOUSE GUEST
What was that? It sounds like

thousands of years ago thousands of miles away!
MAX
That was the first line of the Rig Veda Samhita: “Agni I worship; the chief priest of the sacrifice; the divine priest, the invoker, conferring the greatest wealth.” MAX’S SON
Mr. Bell, can we hear the house-fly
again? That was fantastic!
INT. MAX’S 54 HOME – DAY. 1879 54
We see Max before his stacks of mail on a secretary desk, reading and writing letters by an oil lamp, sunlight pouring through the window.
MAX (V.O.)
Dear Professor the Right Honorable
Friedrich Max Mueller: It has come
to my attention, and the attention
of the Shanghai Missionary
Conference, that your colleague,
James Legge, has again exceeded all
norms of propriety.
(MORE)
91.
This undignified lurch into near
madness can only be corrected by
transfixing the word “Shang-di” as
“Supreme Ruler” not “God,” which is
Anglo-Saxon; and the God of
Revelation. I suggest that the God
of Revelation remain “God.” The
Chinese should only be allowed to
choose between either “Supreme
Ruler” or possibly “Ruler on High.”
Yours, Bishop of Victoria, Hong
Kong
MAX (V.O.)
Dear Bishop: I understand your
concern. But I believe that
Europeans reading the words
“Supreme Ruler” will only translate
that into the word “God.” I believe
that it is impossible to find a
better word for “God” in Chinese
than “Shang-di.”

MAX (V.O.)
Dear James: Yes I have received your denunciation from Shanghai. But we must continue to look for that religion which is at the root
of all religions . . . the
provincials remain, in the end, provincials. In the end there is
no religion without God, and there is no God without the perception of the Infinite. Max
LEGGE (V.O.)
Dear Max: It appears I have been ostracized from my fellow missionaries for my tracts on Christianity and Confucianism– mainly over the word “God”–again. My missionary colleagues maintain “God” has no equivalent in Chinese, and my attempts to find the le mot juste make me “boneless as a jellyfish.” I have drawn closer to your view recently: that there is hardly any religion that does not contain some truth, some important truth, as St. Augustine says. I am working on new renditions of my previous translations of the Books of Historical Documents, of Songs, and of Filial Piety.
MAX (V.O.) (CONT’D)
(MORE)
92.
I balk at calling the Book of Songs “sacred,” although I know you demand complete translations, but I am abridging the Book of Songs, which I hold second only in importance to the Book of Historical Documents. In the end, I suggest leaving out the Analects
and the Mencius, and including the Dao de Jing and the Zhuang zi. Max, I confess I have a tin ear for the tones, because I have never cared for music or dance. On my

way back from Italy I stopped to meet Stanislaus Julien at his residence, a meet arranged by you, of course. On the surface things were pleasant enough, but under the surface it felt like a boxing
match. Yours, James
INT. 10 DOWNING 55 STREET – DAY. 55
The office of Prime Minister Gladstone. A British official ushers Palmer into Gladstone, sitting at his desk. The official leaves.
GLADSTONE
Come in, Mr. Palmer. You have been
recommended to me by Professor Max
Mueller of Oxford, and Professor
Edward Cowell of Cambridge on
account of your Arabic abilities.
In short Her Royal Majesty’s
government requires intelligence of
the revolt in Egypt by Arabi Pasha.
Because we have interests in
ensuring the safety of the Suez
Canal, we need to secure the
allegiance and promise of the local
Bedouin to NOT rise up in league
with Arabi Pasha. Beside the
Khedive of Egypt is our man. Your
mission is to ascertain the
inclinations of the locals. That’s
50,000 Bedouin for someone to
pacify–with gold–3000 pounds
sterling worth of it. By all
accounts said person would be a
spy. Are you interested?
PALMER
Of course! Who wouldn’t be?
LEGGE (V.O.) (CONT’D)
93.
GLADSTONE
(double takes, then
scrutinizes)
You would then, after this
pacification, have to cut the
telegraph lines from Palestine to
the Sultan Abdulhamid II’s Sublime
Porte in Istanbul.

PALMER
And back up?
GLADSTONE
The Suez Canal is sufficiently
armed by British troops in case of
the Egyptians attack it.
PALMER
Where do I sign?
GLADSTONE
You don’t.
PALMER
I’ll take it.
Gladstone nods.
EXT. SAUDI ARABIAN 56 DESERT – DAY. 56
We see a black and white Pathe newsreel: An eleven-camel caravan. Dromedaries with bags, boxes. Palmer is following his guide. His guide leads them all, three other British officers, into a prearranged ambush of thieves. A gunfight ensues, and Palmer “circles the wagons” in the confusion, and the guide makes off with all the gold. The angry, confused ambushing thieves, without their loot, take vengeance on their captives and drive them like cattle on rope leashes without water to Wadi Sudr. One of the thieves approaches Palmer with a gun, Palmer curse him in classical Arabic. The thief shoots Palmer in the back of the head. Blood (in color) spurts all over the lens of the camera. They threw Palmer
off the cliff like a dog. The three others are shot and
tossed off the cliff, one by one after Palmer.
94.
INT. BRITISH CONSULATE 57 IN DAMASCUS – DAY. 57 BURTON
Isabella! Something’s wrong!
Those telegraph lines to the
Ottoman Empire have not been cut,
I’m worried, and I’ve gotten a word
from Her Royal Majesty’s government
to investigate!
ISABELLA
No, not Edward. How? You and he
know all the local sheikhs, they
would have given him safe passage.
BURTON
Palmer indeed had bread and salt
with the Sheiks of the Teyahah and
Terebin–like old friends. An
Arab’s bond is his word. I fear

something foul has befallen our
excellent friend.
DISSOLVE TO:
58 EXT. BOTTOM OF A CLIFF IN THE DESERT – DAY 58 Burton at the bottom of a ravine holding Palmer’s shirttail,
he smells it.
BURTON
Gunpowder.
DISSOLVE TO:
59 EXT. TOWN SQUARE IN EGYPT – DAY. 59
We see Burton standing in town square, facing five of the twenty bandits hanging from gibbets in a town square. BURTON
(talking to himself)
Forgive me, sadiq! I was only able
to swing five of the dogs.
FADE TO BLACK.
95.
INT. OXFORD 60 CLASSROOM – DAY. 60
We hear Ravel’s Pavane de la Belle au Bois Dormant. We see chalk. We see a chalkboard. We see chalk all over the chalkboard. We see Legge sit down. His classroom is empty seats and desks. On the chalkboard we see his copious notes in Chinese. On his desk we see the medieval Ganying pian, dynastic histories, the Kangxi edict, Han Yu’s essays, Zhu Xi’s commentaries, and the Xiyou ji. He is writing a letter. LEGGE (V.O.)
Dear Max, as time passes I draw
closer to the views of Kong zi as a
moral and ethical teacher; while
the Dao de Jing remains to me the
obscurest book ever written. The
world is changing, and I don’t why.
Communication through air! Machines
that bring you from place to place
quicker for no reason but speed!
The sheer noise of the railway
station renders me useless. The
electric light bulb! What was
wrong with the candle? Was there
something wrong with the sun? And
why do we need Otto’s so-called
combustible engine? Can life go
any faster than the way it is going
all the time anyway?
DISSOLVE TO:

61 EXT. TRAIN STATION – DAY. 61
We see Legge approaching the local railway station, where the station-master and clerks see him coming and are grinning knowingly. Clerks and staff shift into high gear and greet Legge, helping him with the train schedule. They steer him onto the proper train as he appears disoriented by the whole process; the staff wave goodbye then sigh with relief, Legge nodding from railroad car window.
DISSOLVE TO:
62 INT. OXFORD CLASSROOM – DAY. 62
LEGGE
(continues writing)
The world of the 1870s is becoming
“too much with me,” too modern for
me, and yet no medicine could save
my beloved wife Hannah.
(MORE)
96.
Dr. Lister’s surgery was of no
avail . . . while at the same time
manning my teaching post here at
Oxford caused the greatest regret
of my life. I rushed back to
London when I received a telegram
from Lister that Hannah was dying
from an infection. She died in my
arms minutes after my arrival.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. ENGLISH 63 COUNTRYSIDE – DAY. 63
We hear Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude. Autumn mists and rain drifting through the morbid, fungus-coated fallen oak trees
and beech woods. Black and white bare, leafless twigs everywhere. A carpet of red leaves on the forest floor. Low hanging gray clouds on the tree crowns. We see a depressed Legge, in his overcoat, sitting next to a driver, on a wagon, carting a coffin (Hannah), with his daughters riding in the
back, entering Holywell cemetery. Legge knocks on the door
of the vicarage. The vicar opens the door and shakes his
head no. We see the vicar mouth the words “Non-conformist, sorry.” Legge trudges back in the mud, throws his overcoat over the pine coffin to keep it dry, and then Legge gets back
on the wagon’s front seat.
DISSOLVE TO:
64 EXT. ANOTHER CHURCH IN OXFORDSHIRE – DAY. 64 We see Legge travel to another vicarage. It’s still
drizzling. He lifts and lets fall the front door’s knocker.

From around the back we see a vicar with an umbrella sneak away without being detected. Legge turns the wagon around in the mist.
LEGGE
Daughters, the early Christians were often drawn to the new religion of Jesus because his converts had a guaranteed burial in a Christian graveyard, specially set aside for his followers . . .
and now we cannot bury mother in England . . .
DISSOLVE TO:
LEGGE (CONT’D)
97.
INT. LEGGE’S OXFORD 65 CLASSROOM – DAY. 65 LEGGE (V. O.)
And for leaving Hannah’s bedside to
go teach at Oxford, I will always
despise myself forever. Yours
faithfully, James
Door knocks. We hear slight knocks echo on empty classroom’s door. A Chinese man peeks around the door.
CHINESE MAN
May I come in, Dr. Legge?
LEGGE
Of course.
CHINESE MAN
My name is Sun Wen. I am from
Guangdong, and I am with the Revive
China society. Wang Tao suggested
meeting you. He and I have met on
several occasions. I am collecting
money for our cause.
LEGGE
What is your cause?
SUN WEN
The overthrow of the Imperial
Government of the Manchu Q’ing
Dynasty.
LEGGE
I don’t think I can afford that at
the moment.
Legge checks his pockets.
LEGGE (CONT’D)
We must meet for lunch, Sun Wen. I

read about your legation in the
News, but at the moment I am not
feeling very well.
Legge sees Sun Yat-sen to the door. But on his way back to his chair he feels the color fade from his face, he has to steady himself, and, sitting down he stares as if to see he
is okay, wondering if he might be having a presentiment of a stroke.
CUT TO:
98.
INT. DEBATE HALL – NIGHT66 . 6 6
We see a crowded lecture auditorium at Oxford University. Max and Williams both stand before lecterns facing the audience. We jump cut to close up of Williams. The debate is in progress.
WILLIAMS
(sweating, angry, worked
up)
I don’t know why ungrateful
subjects of the crown should ever
rebel! I do not think the Indians
will ever rise to the occasion of
civilization. There can only be
one true religion . . . the
religion of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. The other religions
are like steps toward the one true
church of mankind, Christianity.
Hinduism has hints, here and there,
of a true spirituality, but so does
the religion of the imposter
Mahomet, and what passes for
religion in the land of the heathen
Chinee–I don’t know but that the
Chinee “religion” could be called
anything else but nature worship, a
love of sticks and stones,
obviously not the land for true
Christians, but–
MAX
–a true Christian condemns himself
as a sinner–and then–
WILLIAMS
–better not to sin at all I say.
As for your “going native” you sir,
have never been to the land of the

Hindus, and I have. I know at
first hand what a land of filth and lies it really is. The backward
nature of the Hindus is written on every face in every village I ever
had the misfortune to walk through on my extensive visits. The lives
of these denizens YOU see only in the oriental glow of a false past,
the afterglow of your Vedic researches, which today is a mere flicker.
(MORE)
99.
The echoes of Vedic religion we
hear today are but runic spells, prayers to elephants, charms,
curses, and the flotsam and jetsam
of the shipwreck of their superstitions. We can only pity
these poor souls, in their jungles, burning their widows alive like
Joan of Arcs, and their lewd idol worship. Why have you never gone to India? Is it because you are
afraid to find out that your
liberal, deist, latitudinarian
ideas would melt away in the heat
of the torrid climate of a Hindu
hell? You would find yourself transformed into a motherless
child, a babe in the woods, a cowering pariah dog of a Hindu Luther?
MAX
No, I simply didn’t have the time.
I was too busy in my role as
Ulfilas, Bishop of the Goths,
herding Germans through the Black Forest to Wittenberg to sail off on another night sea journey, which– WILLIAMS
No time for the Crown? The Empire! Brittania! Of course you don’t
have time for the British Empire,
or Christianity, which is the only

full-blooded religion fit for an Englishman. All the other
religions are, you will notice, ‘isms’: Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Mohammedanism–
MAX
You left one out.
WILLIAMS
Which one?
MAX
Yours. Jingoism.
The audience falls silent as if a pall has been drawn over them. A question and answer period begins.
WILLIAMS (CONT’D)
100.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #1
Professor Mueller you seem to find
something good in every religion,
except Christianity.
Audience is unsettled, murmurs of “blasphemous” are heard. AUDIENCE MEMBER #2
Your pantheism is atheism in
disguise!
MAX
Gentlemen, I have always thought of
the Sacred Books of the East series
as a demonstration of the evolution
of religious thought over time, not
as a “canon”–nor as a means of
exploiting the natives. Here I
stand accused, on the one hand, of
being anti-British, and on the
other, of catering to British
imperialists. Do you need an
“Orientalist” translation of an
ancient text such as the Vedas to
control the Hindu masses? The
British have botched their hold on
India because of greed and hubris,
along the same lines they used for
the invasion of Ireland. As I
recall, the English simply grabbed
the land they wanted and eliminated
the Irishry, nary a folktale, nor
legend, mattering a smattering. It

is true that I care more about
words than thoughts and more about
thoughts than I do about politics.
My line of work is as a translator.
My preoccupation is, for example,
with something like: how does one
translate “atman”? By self or
Self, instead of soul, mind, or
spirit? Or the word “sat” which I
left as is, as too untranslatable.
I believe some words are
untranslatable. That’s what
translators decide as artists unto
themselves. My colleague James
Legge wrestled with the word “Dao”
and he tried “Way,” “Reason,” and
“The Word.” in the end he left it
as “Dao”–
101.
AUDIENCE MEMBER #1
–and he probably should have left
it out altogether!
Slight applause, yawns, bored looks.
MAX
This actual sensation of Beyond in
all things, whether great or small,
seems to me the true foundation, or
the sine qua non, of religion, and
that is why I agree with the
Vedantists Ramakrishna and Swami
Vivekenda that the aim of all
religion is transcendental . . . to
.. .
Max watches as Monier Monier-Williams leaves the dais and returns with stacks of the Sacred Books of the East series in his arms, making five unwieldy trips back and forth, moaning, and piling up all the books on a table between the two lecterns. Williams then holds the Bible in the air, facing
the audience.
WILLIAMS
Ladies and Gentlemen, which would
you choose? The One book, or this
ungainly stack of fifty books? One
book of bedrock TRUTH? Or FIFTY
volumes founded on the shifting
sands of Accomodationism?

Laughter, guffaws, applause. Audience happy now they know the debate is over. Exhausted but pleased looks, abound. AUDIENCE
The Bible! The Holy Bible!
67 INT. MONTAGE. 67
We hear the Tarantella from Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. In animation: we see the 49 volumes of leather-bound Sacred Books of the East series appear as cliffs, ridges of desert sandstone from their spines, which erode into sprays of
atoms, which re-form in outer space into a Bengal tiger, out
of a vortex of milk. On a rose, Max is a spider, and talking
to spiders, one spider is the right-wing politician V. D.
Savarkar, who stabs Max, and carves a human heart out of Max– bites it and throws it up in the air, an eagle catches it and
drops it onto a pyre–we hear SCREAMS–the pyre is the Babri mosque that goes up in flames. From the rubble, paramilitary neo-Nazi Hindus turn into ants with boots. Naked Jain
priests avoid stepping on them.
102.
Max is floating face down the Ganges. Buddha, fishing him
out, falls in. Max is in a Bollywood musical dancing up and down the Himalayas. Queen Victoria frozen in ice-blocks
says: “Les Bibles de l’humanite ne sont pas amusantes.” Mahavira turns into a skeleton picking cotton in cotton
fields for Union Carbide. Newsreel: Bengal famine of 1942,
we see emaciated corpses, millions of them, and the cows’
heads are Churchill’s. A hologram of Krishna shows him at an altar preparing the soma libation, which he drinks and
urinates out into a bowl. Max drinks the elixir and becomes a boy. Photographers flash bulbs: the boy Max is between
Nehru and Jinna. Mountains turn into flakes of snow that spin into solar systems, a photograph of which is in the hands of Radha. Photograph: bliss-filled face of Radha, her eyes are oceans behind which there is a lotus, upon which Ambedkhar in his business suit, sits like a buddha by a reservoir. Then
we see film clips of the riots of partition in 1947. We see Narendra Modi in his pin-striped suit on an elephant enter Wembley Stadium. The movie Gandhi is being shown on the big screen. We see a clip from the famous salt march. When
Gandhi is shot Wembley Stadium cheers. The houselights go up in the sky. It was all a movie. Contemporary audience gets
up to leave. The Rig Veda is for sale in the lobby of a
multiplex (escalators are full), but no one is buying the
book. Another audience is all in line buying giant buckets
of popcorn, Coca Colas, and Ballpark franks. A pimply usher, reading The Art of the Deal, throws a cardboard cut-out of

Max Mueller advertising “The Translators” into a utility closet, and leaves the book there. He yawns and punches out on a time clock with his plastic ID, leaves. Outside on the marquee, we read the coming attraction: TRUMP: The Man Behind the Myth, starring Arnold Schwartzenegger, a line around the block.
INT. 68 CHURCH – DAY. 1897 68
We hear Bach’s St. Mathew Passion. We see a small crowd of disconsolate scholars huddled up near the front of a nearly empty church. Legge’s surviving daughters in front row nervous, in mourning dress.
MAX
(addressing congregation)
James Legge died at home peacefully
in his sleep. Fitting for such a
peaceful man as he. Never had I
such a dependable friend all my
life as James Legge. His influence
will be felt for as long as
humanity reads the Chinese
classics.
(MORE)
103.
He lay the groundwork for all
future scholars of Chinese, without
doubt, his accomplishments cannot
be erased, they can only be emended
by his epigones. The backlash
amongst Chinese critics had it that
he had stereotyped Confucianism as
“merely a humanist philosophy.”
Which criticism will remain just
that: backlash. His missionary
colleagues disavowed him for
equating the Chinese God with the
Christian God. They knew not
whereof they spoke. In his
lifetime, James Legge was rejected.
But, “The stone the builders
rejected, is now the foundation
stone.” And now let us carry the
dearly departed body of James Legge
to Holywell Cemetery, my friend,
whose spirit I hope to see soon.
Max and others organize, and lift up Legge’s coffin to carry him down the aisle. Church empties out.

DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. TRAIN STATION 69 IN LONDON – DAY. 69
HISS. WHISTLE. SCREECH. Close-up: spinning pilot wheels, black coal smoke, swirling around a yellow fog like pudding. He hear wood blocks. We see a cowcatcher in outline. A smokestack and funnel. Like a big black bullet a locomotive emerges from the sheets of steam. We see the driver wheels
of a 4-4-0 locomotive. We see the vested crowds disperse,
open umbrellas, leaving behind an Indian guru in white tunic, long white beard on chest, standing on the railway station platform, looking lost, cold-shouldered by the station-master and clerks.
GURU
Can you point me in the direction
of Bhatta Moksah Mulera?
ENGLISHMAN #1
Who the–say wot? Old bean?
That’s a bit of puzzler! He must
be one of those ecto-effluvial
ghosts hovering behind the damask
curtains during seances at the
Society of Psychical Research,
rapping at the tables and what nots
and disturbing the bibelots?
MAX (CONT’D)
104.
GURU
No, his name is Mueller, Mueller.
He is well known in India, a
defender of Hindus in your
newspapers.
ENGLISHMAN #2
Oscar, we must away to Paris! But
I think Mueller is that professor
chap went native in the press! You
know Mueller! Oxford!
ENGLISHMAN #1 (OSCAR WILDE)
I’ve been in a coffin for three
years–oh! The German swami from
Oxford! You want Oxford, which is
that way, toward the west, where
the sun never sets, my good man!
Wretched thought that, the sun must
always face England–like a young
husband who must wake up to an old
judgmental hag every morning!

Guru walks off in that direction.
EXT. MAX’S 70 HOUSE – NIGHT 70
We hear Beethoven’s Piano Sonata #32, 3rd Movement. Max is in his bedroom, writing letters, when he hears the knock on
the front door. Georgina opens the door. A cold autumn
rain. There stands a distraught Indian woman, RAMA BAI, in a colorful printed georgette sari, salt and pepper hair tied
back, closing her umbrella.
RAMA BAI
Is this home of Max Mueller?
GEORGINA
Yes it is, can I help you?
RAMA BAI
Yes, please I need help! I am a
widow, and I am in dire straits. I
am a Sanskritist. Destitute, I
came to England to try my luck. I
was staying in a Christian house of
charity. With my maidservant. She
tried to kill me!
GEORGINA
My God, why? Come in! Dry
yourself off. You must get out of
the rain!
105.
RAMA BAI
She feared my conversion to
Christianity, she stabbed me; then
she stabbed herself. She’s dead.
I didn’t know where to go!
MAX
(in his bedclothes sleepy, he is
trying out a cane)
Yes you can stay here. We have a
room you can share with our
maidservant to keep you company.
You are welcome to stay here until
you recover. But I myself am not
well.
RAMA BAI
I thank you so much. If I ever
feel better, I intend to found a
home for–women such as are widows–
Another knock on the door. Georgina opens door. The guru at the train station has walked all the way Max’s house. He is soaked.

GURU
Moksha Mulara?
MAX
(salaams weakly then
reaches for his back just
as H. H. Wilson used to)
Indeed! Or what is left of me!
GURU
(entering house)
I thought I should like England!
But I hate it! The Englishman
knows nothing! Before I left I
thought should visit you.
Max sighs. He looks at his unfinished letter.
MAX
I no longer know what I have to
give. I can only think that so
poorly have all sides behaved that
in the end the British and the
Indians deserved each other!
GEORGINA
Max! You don’t mean that!
Guru places hand on Max’s shoulder.
106.
GURU
But you, you are not that way. I
can tell that you have looked death
in the face. I can tell that you
were not like the others.
MAX
Namaste. Make yourself at home,
anywhere. I have to rest.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. MAX’S BEDROOM 71 – SAME NIGHT. 71
Max is resting in bed. A black beetle crawls over the white bedsheet. Max reaches but can’t brush it off.
MAX (V.O.)
Dear William Russell: I am
reflecting now that even now when
we are both cripples, we delight in
meeting and talking over very
distant days. With my liver
failing and my memory worn out, I
am writing you from my bed,
thinking of the role FRIENDS have
played in my life–how often the

whole stream of my life has been
turned East or West by a word or
two spoken by a friend just at the
right moment. Who could have
guessed that chance would have
slammed its door into you on the
paddle-steamer fifty years ago?
And ushered you into my new life in
London, and you would be my Virgil
guiding through this metropolis?
Max closes his eyes and opens them. He puts down his pen. He looks out the same window that he looked out correcting his Rig-Veda proofs, but it is night and the rain is whipping against the windows.
MAX
Georgina! Do we ever really lose
those who are called before us? I
feel that they are even nearer to
us than when they were with us in
life! Georgina! Are you there?
107.
GEORGINA
I am right here by your side Max,
right where I have been for the
last forty years.
MAX
I am so tired.
THE END
We hear Dvorak’s Bagatelles, Op. 47 again. 108.
at 3:04 PM No comments: Email This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook Share to Pinterest
Select Language ▼
About Me
Older PostsHome Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Richard Gangelhoff
Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Welcome to my website for writers and book readers. View my complete profile
Ethereal theme. Powered by Blogger.