mikeh wrote: 24 Jun 2019, 02:05
Added: another error, I think, although all the translations make it (copying each other?). He renders " l'Amour les perce de ses traits" as "Cupid lines up his arrow. " Surely the meaning is "Love pierces them with his traits."
Not all, Tyson gets it totally wrong and translates it:
"... a priest blesses them, an expression of love on his features."
SF is closer with:
"...Love pierces them of its traits."
But again SF has not translated 'traits' correctly, and the use of 'its' implies a reading of l'Amour here in the abstract sense as 'love' rather than as a name referring to the figure/god of Love, Cupid.
Both of them I believe have mistranslated 'traits' here, not realizing that 'traits' is used here in the somewhat archaic sense of meaning 'arrows'.
l'Amour means here [the god of] Love, that is, Cupid/Eros, the fourth figure on the card (the lover, the beloved, the priest (as Gebelin describes them) and l'Amour/Cupid).
Eros/Cupid/the god of Love is, or was, often named "l'Amour" in French, sometimes diminutively as 'the little god of Love' - "l'Amoureau" . The phrase 'l'Amour …. perce de ses traits' is one derived from the common depiction of Cupid with drawn bow and arrow.
Trait [or traict] has several meanings, line, arrow, dart, lance, shaft, spear [in which sense it is now rarely used], or in terms of character as features, traits [more common meanings in modern French]. As 'arrow' it is not exactly synonymous with Flesche, or dart [arrow] - as it is usually used in respect of an arrow that is bowed and drawn, aimed, lined up, ready to shoot - it also means a lance/spear, but again tends to be used specifically of a lance/spear in hand ready to be thrown. That is, it is used of projectile weapons (lances, spears, arrows, darts) in use, at the ready, in the course of action. As such there is no one word translation of it in English I can think of off-hand, 'arrows' doesn't give the full meaning of it, it needs some qualification such as, for example:
Cupid [or, the god of Love]
is ready (or, about?) to pierce them with his arrows.