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In his book [A Philosophy of
Loneliness](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo26297655.html)
author Lars Svendsen describes two different types of "being alone".

_Loneliness_ is used to name the feeling that you are alone, and you feel
desperate about this (i.e. you crave some kind of connection with others, and
cannot get it, either because you are actually alone, or because you cannot
somehow reach out to others).

_Solitude_ is instead the "positive" side of the same condition: you are alone
because you like being alone (it could just be time you use to pursuit a
hobby, for example, the classical "me time") but you are content if not
downright happy being alone.

Question: is it possible to express these two different types of "being alone"
(one negative, one positive) in Japanese?

(If at all possible I'd prefer to use Kanji for this: most of my questions
here are for possible use of the words in my Shodo practice, but I am also
just curious about how this can be expressed in the language, no matter how it
is written).
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translation word-requests
Positive and negative Loneliness
**孤高{ここう}** seems the best for **solitude** , but it sounds a little bit
stoical, and formal as ErikaO says in the comment.  
How about **悠々{ゆうゆう}自適{じてき} / 悠悠{ゆうゆう}自適{じてき}**?  
I know it is not an exact translation for _solitude_ , but it could possibly
be the second best. It has not enough nuance of being alone explicitly than
孤高{ここう}, but it sounds more gentle than 孤高.

悠々自適 means _living by oneself free from worldly cares_. It could be used in a
phrase like:  
悠々自適の生活{せいかつ}を送{おく}る or 悠々自適に暮{く}らす _to lead a life by oneself free from
worldly cares_.

* * *

There is an
[article](http://loneliness.hatenablog.com/entry/2015/02/17/172511) on your
topic. The writer says there is not an exact Japanese term equivalent to
solitude except 孤高 which is not necessarily exact. In this article he shows us
a very interesting fact that the combination of " _enjoy solitude_ " hit far
more than that of " _enjoy loneliness_ " when he searched them on the
Internet. I think this search result shows us the essential difference between
them.

Don't you think to _enjoy solitude_ goes hand in hand with 悠々｛ゆうゆう｝自適｛じてき｝
_living by oneself free from worldly cares_?
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answer
A few thoughts come to mind. Alan Sillitoe's short story "The Loneliness of
the Long-distance Runner" (which is about the sense of freedom and peace a
young delinquent has when he is allowed out of the reformatory to go cross-
country running, so I'd say it was a positive emotion) is called
「[長距離]{ちょうきょり}[走者]{そうしゃ}の[孤独]{こどく}」 in Japanese. In Wordsworth's poem "The
Daffodils", the phrase "the bliss of solitude" (clearly positive) is
translated both as [孤独]{こどく}の[至福]{しふく} and 一人きりの至福. The phrase 一人ぼっちの夜 in
Sakamoto Kyu's song 「上を向いて歩こう(涙がこぼれないように)」 is clearly negative. "Carson
McCullers's "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", about the ultimate impossibility
of complete understanding between human beings, is 「愛すれど心さびしく」. I think
さびしい/さびしさ is always negative.
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answer