First of all, it should be noted that the concept of ‘love’ is central, fundamental in Akhmatova's lyric system. The first and most important of its features is its multivaluedness, the semantic inexhaustibility. “Love” for Akhmatova a whole complex of conflicting feelings, emotions, emotions, however, in a complex interaction. The two extreme semantic points here are love-the greatest happiness and love-tragedy. Between them there is a whole spectrum of the most diverse shades, but they are all different implementations of a single meaning: love embodies everything.
However, the tragic and undivided love turns out to be the dominant one in Akhmatova's lyric poetry. The poet finds a huge amount of linguistic means for expressing a variety of semantic nuances that convey the sadness and suffering of a loving but unloved woman. Thus, on the whole, it can be stated that for all the inner semantic multi aspect, the concept of ‘love’ in Akhmatova's early lyrics is predominantly tragic in tone.
As for the options for lexical implementation of this concept, they are just as diverse. Poetess uses and keywords(любовь, любить, любовный), but does not often. In addition, the semantic content of keywords is created, among other things, by their semantic context. Completely neutral or even positively marked word finds in the lyrics of Akhmatova additional ‘side’, deep meanings.
Using synonyms and antonyms to express the semantics of love is also frequency. However, as already noted, synonyms and antonyms in Akhmatova's lyrics are neutralized; Sometimes antonymous tokens become in her verses contextual synonyms. And this, like the abundance of oxymoronic combinations, again and again emphasizes the contradictoriness and multidimensionality of the concept of ‘love’.
In addition, to express all the same ‘ineffable’ meanings, the poetess uses descriptive constructions, that is, descriptions of objects, rooms, phenomena, sounds that do not (at first sight) have any relation to the expression of love feelings. But all these subjects, nevertheless, are able to express a love experience as sharply and deeply as the language trails and figures of speech.
Thus, the concept of ‘love’ in Akhmatova's lyrics combines a variety of contradictory meanings, but nevertheless continues to be an integral, unified semantic field, inseparable into separate components. It is this multifacetedness, contradictoriness and at the same time integrity, the indissolubility of the semantic field “love” that can express the multifacetedness and contradictoriness of a love feeling. The range of ‘love’ (feelings and their linguistic expression) is great and inexhaustible, as are the inexhaustible meaning and ways of expressing the concept of ‘love’.