Simmel also speaks (in his essay “Über die Liebe”) of an “overtone of the tragic” which adheres to every great love because although the instinctual basis of love is connected with the life of the species, the pure experience of love is self-contained, an end in itself—opposed to the purposiveness involved in the continuation of the species and the procreation of third parties.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 917