Full Idea
True irony is the irony of love. It arises from the feeling of finitude and one's own limitation, and the apparent contradiction of these feelings with the concept of infinity inherent in all true love.
Gist of Idea
True love is ironic, in the contrast between finite limitations and the infinity of love
Source
Friedrich Schlegel (works [1798], Vol.10 p.357), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism
Book Reference
'A Companion to Continental Philosophy', ed/tr. Critchley,S/Schroeder,W [Blackwell 1999], p.82
A Reaction
[c.1827] This is more about idealist philosophy and its yearning for the Absolute than it is about the actual nature of love. Love is the door to the Absolute. The irony is our inability to pass through it.