then established, finally traditional reverence.

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suprunp

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153.[...]
for all the world is accustomed to confound the author with his work. What there is of spirit, sweetness and goodness in the latter can evolve only over the years, under the care of growing, then established, finally traditional reverence.

(Human, All Too Human; Volume Two; translated by R.J. Hollingdale)

Is the part in bold tied to the rest of the sentence only semantically?
(In other words it seems to me that the part in bold can't be linked to the rest of the sentence syntactically.)
(My apologies if my terminology is slightly incongruous.)

Thanks.
 

Larkus

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I am not an English teacher.

What Nietzsche means here is:

153.[...]
for all the world is accustomed to confound the author with his work. What there is of spirit, sweetness and goodness in the latter can evolve only over the years, [first] under the care of growing [reverence],then established [reverence], finally traditional reverence.

The sentence doesn't refer to "under the care of growing", but to "under the care of [...] reverence".

It is more understandable in German because of the peculiar German capitalization.

By the way, this is my first post on this message board. Cheers!
 

Hedwig

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Welcome aboard, Larkus.
Great reply!
I'm wondering if a comma after traditional wouldn't make it more understandable in English?
 

suprunp

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Welcome to the Forum, Larkus!

Thank you, now I see this sentence in a completely different light (for some reason I wasn't able to see this easily comprehended connection between the words...)
 

Larkus

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I didn't understand it fully either, until I looked up the original.

I read it like this: What there is of spirit, sweetness and goodness in the latter can evolve only over the years, under the care of growing, then established, finally traditional reverence.

At first I took "under the care of growing, then established" as a parenthesis with "growing" as a substantive and where "then" presumably refered to "over the years". Only it didn't make too much sense. I think you can fault Nietsche for not using "first" in an appropriate place, but then, in German you can get away with that, because you have other indicators for what the sentence means. It may be, that it just can't be translated directly without loss in understandability.

I first included a link to the German original, but it seems, that I am not long enough here to post links. You can find one version under Wikimedia Commons.
 

5jj

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I'm wondering if a comma after traditional wouldn't make it more understandable in English?
Yes.It's essential, in my opinion.
 
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