Machado's "artificial" anti-rhetoric

«Orillas del Duero»

    Se ha asomado una cigüeña a lo alto del campanario.
Girando en torno a la torre y al caserón solitario,
ya las golondrinas chillan.  Pasaron del blanco invierno,
de nevascas y ventiscas los crudos soplos de infierno.
                         Es una tibia mañana.
El sol calienta un poquito la pobre tierra soriana.
    Pasados los verdes pinos,
casi azules, primavera
se ve brotar en los finos
chopos de la carretera
y del río.  El Duero corre, terso y mudo, mansamente.
El campo parece, más que joven, adolescente.
    Entre las hierbas alguna humilde flor ha nacido,
azul o blanca.  ¡Belleza del campo apenas florido,
y mística primaver!
    ¡Chopos del camino blanco, álamos de la ribera,
espuma de la montaña
ante la azul lejanía,
sol del día, claro día!
¡Hermosa tierra de España!

Gregorio Salvador's reading of Machado's "Orillas del Duero" (Soledades) is hilarious as well as provoking.  In parts, his authoritative and technical reading throws down the gauntlet against Machado's stance as a voice emanating from the los pueblos y campos de Castilla.  With a side jab, the imperative of the rhyme seems to dictate the presence of certain words -- like infierno, whose only apparent function is to chase down "invierno".  It's the sort of rhyme that sticks out of the "naturalidad" of the language.  Basically, it's a distraction.  S's line of questioning is as follows: for a poet grounded in the prose of the world, why follow a word choice dictated by the formalities of a rhyme scheme?

Then Salvador gets to deeper issues.  The last line of the poem -- "¡Hermosa tierra de España!" -- creates a sensation of exuberance or radiance.  Yet the language throughout the poem only diminishes such exuberance.  "La descripción se quiebra."  Salvador asserts that this diminished exuberance hollows out the "naturalidad" of the language: "es demasiado artificiosa para un poema tan sencillo".

It seems to me that this tension of artificiality is the strength of the poem.   This occurs through a collision between the relayed scene and the poetic molding.  Just as the subject matter follows a series of banks and boundaries at the site of the river, the final line "Hermosa tierra de España" is on the brink of collapsing into the river.  The "exuberance" is cast out onto a rather dismal, dormant world, full of holes and distances.  In this case, "the river" would be the space resurrected of the poem itself.  If Machado should be labelled as anti-rhetorical, it should only be understood as a refusal to leave the poem contained in a prison of its own words.  His ideas, sentiments and images are too personal.  This to me seems to be the quieted exuberance at work here.