The Bloody Countess: Atrocities of Erzsebet Bathory (Solar Blood History) - Softcover

Penrose, Valentine

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9780971457829: The Bloody Countess: Atrocities of Erzsebet Bathory (Solar Blood History)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971457824 ISBN 13: 9780971457829

Publisher: Solar Books, 2006

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Descended from an aristocratic European family, Erzsebet Bathory bore the psychotic aberrations of centuries of intermarriage. From adolescence on, she indulged in sadistic lesbian fantasies, and by middle age, had regressed to a mirror-fixated state of pathological necro-sadism involving witchcraft, torture, blood-drinking, and more. Her 16th century reign of cruelty remains unsurpassed in the annals of mass murder, with the Countess? depredations on the virgin girls of the Carpathians leading to some 650 deaths id her many castles equipped with torture chambers. This is a true, disturbing case history of a female psychopath, a chillingly lyrical account beautifully translated by Alexander Trocchi, evoking the decadent melancholy of doomed, delinquent aristocracy in a dark age of superstition. The book contains an appendix featuring actual transcripts from Bathory’s trial and has inspired many horror movies, such as Hammer’s Countess Dracula.

De Sade did not know of Erzs‚bet Bathory’s existence, but doubtless her atrocities would have roused his most vicious excitement. -- Georges Bataille, The Tears Of Eros

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About the Author:

Valentine Penrose affiliated with the surrealists, she was also the wife of British Surrealist Sir Roland Penrose. This is her only full-length book.

Alexander Trocchi was a Scottish novelist affiliated with the Beats. His novels include Cain’s Book, and Young Adam, recently filmed with Ewan McGregor as the lead.

Introduction This is the story of the Countess who bathed in the blood of girls. An authentic story, hitherto unpublished in its horrific entirety anywhere. The documents concerning it are extremely difficult to get hold of, for it all happened more than three and a half centuries ago in a savage Hungary which today lies behind the Iron Curtain. Relevant documents passed from one archive to another. No one knows what has happened since 1956 to the Hungarian archives which were kept in Budapest Castle. Where would one go to see the sombre portrait with the haggard eyes of the very beautiful Erzs‚bet Bathory? For the last two hundred years Csejthe Castle has lain in ruins on its rocky spur of the Lesser Carpathians on the frontier of Slovalda. But the ghost and the vampires remain, and so does that earthenware pot which used to contain the blood which was about to be poured over the shoulders of the Countess; that is still there in a comer of the cellars. The Beast of Csejthe, the bloody Countess, still shrieks in the night, in that very room whose door and windows were, and still remain, walled up. There is every indication that she was a female Gilles de Rais; even the hasty trial in which, out of respect for a name illustrious since the birth of Hungary, and because of those services rendered by her family to the Hapsburgs, so many facts were suppressed. It was even judged imprudent to interrogate her personally. The minutes of the trial were discovered in 1729 by a Jesuit Father, Laszl Tur czi, who wrote a monograph on Erzs‚bet Bathory, to be published in 1744. He gathered together a story that no one in the region of Csejthe has ever forgotten. Moreover, Tur czi had access to documents first preserved in the archives of the Court of Vienna and then sent to Budapest, those relating to the interrogation conducted by the Palatine Thurz at Bicse (then Bittsere) at the very beginning of January 1611, and was thus able to take into account the reasons adduced as well as the order for the execution of the Countess’s accomplices, dated 7th January. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, this work in Latin was our only reference....

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