He often complained in his last year that he didn’t understand what it really consisted of, the loneliness we all feared so much.

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4 1/75 s 60.8 mm 400 ISO

What is it that we call loneliness, he said, it can’t simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? … All right, he said, it isn’t only that others are there, that they fill up the space next to us. But even when they celebrate us or give advice in a friendly conversation, clever, sensitive advice: even then we can be lonely. So loneliness is not something simply connected with the presence of others or with what they do. Then what” What on earth? (cited: Night Train to Lisbon, p 319.)