2 Quotes by Brigitte Hamann

Elisabeth later always referred to this situation [her engagement and marriage] with great bitterness, saying, "Marriage is an absurd arrangement. One is sold as a fifteen-year-old child and makes a vow one does not understand and then regrets for thirty years or more, and which one can never undo again.""The Reluctant Empress", chapter 1

[A translation into English of a poem Elisabeth wrote two weeks after her wedding]Oh, had I but never left the pathThat would have led me to freedom.Oh, that on the broad avenuesOf vanity I had never strayed!I have awakened in a dungeon,With chains on my hands.And my longing ever stronger-And freedom! You, turned from me!I have awakened from a rapture,Which held my spirit captive,And vainly do I curse this exchange,In which I gambled away you -freedom!- away. The Reluctant Empress, Chapter 2