Pierre Bernard in his library at the Clarkstown Country Club

The Library of Pierre Bernard was described in published sources as the finest collection of Sanskrit works (original texts, manuscripts and translations) in the Unitesd States at the time, containing apporximately 7000 volumes on the subjects of philosophy, ethics, psychology, education and metaphysics as well as much collateral material on physiology, medicine and the related sciences. Scholars and researchers from around the country were said to have traveled great distances to use Bernard’s library at the Clarkstown Country Club in Nyack, New York which he made available for all.

The Catalog of the Pierre Bernard Library
Index
Case 1 – Sanskrit Dictionaries and Grammars
Case 2 – Women and Sex
Case 3 – Philosophy, Psychology, and Anthropology
Case 4 – Physiognomy, Science and Music
Case 5 – Miscellaneous
Case 6 – Psychic Phenomena, Ancient Religion, Poetry, etc.
Case 7 – Greek, Latin Classics and Fiction
Case 8 – Medicine
Note: All files are pdf format.

The Songs of Bilitis one of the books from the Clarkstown Country Club library

The Songs of Bolitis

This is the only book from the library of the CCC that we have located and purchased. It contains the stamp of the Tantrik Order in America on the title page.

The library was sold at auction in the 1980s. The Edition de Grand Luxe of The Songs of Bolitis has a copyright date of 1904 and is number 403 out of 971  copies published on Imperial Japanese vellum. It is a gorgeous copy and the book itself has a most interesting history.

The Songs of Bolitis, by Pierre Louys. Translated from the Greek and put into English by Horace Manchester Brown. Privately Printed for Members of the Aldus Society, 1904. (This Little Book of Antique Love is Respectfully Dedicated to the Young ladies of the Society of the Future.)

The book’s sensual poems are in the manner of Sappho; the introduction claims they were found on the walls of a tomb in Cyprus, written by a woman of Ancient Greece called Bilitis, a courtesan and contemporary of Sappho, to whose ‘life’ Louÿs dedicated a small section of his book. On publication, the volume deceived even the most expert of scholars. Though the poems were actually clever fabulations, authored by Louÿs himself, they are still considered important literature.

The Songs of Bilitis one of the books from the Clarkstown Country Club library

Imprint of the Library of the Tantrik Order in America