Nietzsche looms over modern literature and thought; according to Gottfried Benn, 'everything my generation discussed, thought through innerly; one could say: suffered; or one could even say: took to the point of exhaustion - all of it had already been said . . . by Nietzsche; all the rest was just exegesis.' Nietzsche's influence on intellectual life today is arguably as great; witness the variā¦