Grammatical Coherence in Hanna Arendt's Writing

Question

I've recently come across a quote by Hanna Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil that looked quite interesting:

"It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past."

While I understand the meaning of the quote, its grammatical structure seems kind of unconventional to me. I'm curious whether this might be influenced by Arendt's German-speaking background or if it represents a form of old-fashioned English that was more common in her time.

For instance, things like:

• The phrase "things human" instead of "human things" seems as unusual. Is this a direct influence of German syntax, or was it a stylistic choice that fits within the norms of English at the time?
• Are there any particular grammatical constructions in this quote that seem directly influenced by German language structures?

I would appreciate any insights, thank you.

Answer 1

About the phrase things human, it is a case of postpositive adjective. And although the word order is not natural in English it does exist, not by German influence, but by influence of Romance languages, according to Grammarist.com:

Postpositive adjectives are adjectives that follow the nouns they modify. Such constructions evince the influence that Romance languages, especially French, have had and still have on English. French, Spanish, and Italian all use postpositive adjectives as a rule.

In general, postpositive adjectives sound unnatural in English, but there are a few set phrases that conventionally comprise modifiers following nouns—for example:

accounts payable, attorney general, court martial

Except for set phrases, you can use postpositive adjectives as a stylistic choice:

Elsewhere, postpositive adjectives are used to provide emphasis or to lend a poetic flourish to a line of text. There are a few English nouns that tend to take postpositive adjectives more often than usual. Things and matters for example:

matters unknown, things innumerable.

As for the rest of the sentence, I am not sure it can be attributed to foreign influence, but the lack of commas does require more work from the reader to separate the units of meaning. Though slightly convoluted, it is still a well-written sentence leaving no room for ambiguity.

If you simplify your sentence, it would read something like:

It is natural for every act, which has once appeared and been recorded in history, to stay with mankind as a potentiality long after it happened.

Answer 2

Compare:

• He had English things in his house.
• He had things English in his house.

The first sentence has meaning, but the second is meaningless; the reason is that the inversion in the case of the word "thing" is meant to make precise that all things specified as English are concerned. (The reference for this fact is a personnal note in my grammar book, but I trust it is information coming from a serious source.) This inversion of the order is found often enough, and is still in use nowadays.

Examples

• things past

• things mathematical - Constructibility and Mathematical Existence - Charles S. Chihara · 1990 Thus one of the first things mathematical that a child learns is how to answer “How many?” questions; and children learn very quickly a simple method, namely counting, for determining how many.

This inversion of the order is not the result of an idiosyncratic influence from the German language, and there appears to be nothing in this sentence that would have a German flavour.