Irony allows one to say two things at once, indeed to express two mutually exclusive realities in a single utterance. It allows one to give voice to love and strife, to indebtedness and ingratitude, to salvation and guilt, triumph and utter defeat all in one breath. “I am the world’s best philosopher,” “I am the perfect parent,” “I have absolute self-knowledge”: these impossible instances of hyperbole actually indicate, very honestly, how far they are from the truth. Irony is the language of the two-faced. It allows one to be a decadent and its opposite.
