English Translation
The happiest women, like only the happiest nations, have no history.
I wonder about pure for “only”, is that poetic licence?
The happiest women, like only the happiest nations, have no history.
I wonder about pure for “only”, is that poetic licence?
Yes, I think “only” is unnecessary and/or wrong. WordReference suggests that “come pure” translates as “just like” or “just as”.
I’ve checked the sentence history on Tatoeba, and it turns out that it’s a chain of translations from the original Japanese: German → French→ Italian. The English seems to be a direct translation from the Japanese and was subsequently linked to the Italian.
So come pure seems to be the translation of French à l’instar de: “just like (in the same way as)”, as you said.
“pure” in this case means “also”, you can replace “come pure” with “come anche” without changing the meaning. But “also” or “even” don’t work in the English sentence, I think @morbrorper suggestion is the best you can do.
Edit: I meant @David755502 suggestion, obviously.
It would really be nice if there was a link back to the question, and to the tatoeba source, that would make research easier!