1. WHAT IS IT?

        During the Italian 13th century, the Dolce Stil Nuovo minstrels took the old stanza from Provençal song and changed it, and it became what we know today as a sonnet. The construction possibilities that these strophic models offer don’t end here: the sonnet tolerates a new meaningful change (besides other smaller changes such as extra verses, or the thirteen verses sonnet, etc) and becomes a new form with a very different and concrete musicality. This form will receive the name of indriso.
        I created the first one in January 2001, in Madrid. The indriso is a poem formed by two terzains and two one-line stanzas (3-3-1-1) and was born out of a rearranged sonnet through a process of stanza condensation. The quatrains in the sonnet become terzains in the indriso, and the two terzains of the sonnet become one-line stanzas.
        Graphically it would be like the following:

Sonnet                                         Indriso
(4-4-3-3)                                      (3-3-1-1)

Before this, I saw the need for testing if I would be in front of one of many non transcendental experiments or if, on the contrary, it would be a form with noticeable expressive potential. Thus, I decided to focus my attention on evaluating the aesthetic possibilities of the new form. Four years later, the result would be a book of poetry named El Manantial y otros poemas (The Fountain and other poems), written entirely with indrisos, and also the following formal definition: 

        Indriso is a poem formed by two terzains and two one-line stanzas (3-3-1-1), with free use of the number of syllables in its verses. It turns it into a fixed and dynamic form at the same time: on the vertical axis, the non-changing structure of the stanzas, on the horizontal axis, the changes in quantity. Moreover it admits all grades and types of rhyme.

    
2.  THE NAME
(Text updated on March, 2007)

        The problem of naming the figure has already been mentioned in the lines before. Those first attempts at solving this problem were only that, first attempts, and more than two years would pass before the question would be answered. The time had come to search for that word, that morpheme, that sound..., with a willingness to find that harmonic, euphonious and high level word, among scientific and literary terminology, in dictionaries of living languages and dead languages. This was all useless.
        The final solution came from a three-year-old girl (whose identity I would like to keep unknown) that, on her first tests with the language and in saying my first name, pronounced the word indriso instead of Isidro.  For a long time I did not even contemplate the possibility of naming the poem after this, but little by little that name reverberated in my ear and, while it was happening, the sensation became increasingly more pleasant, until eventually I succumbed.
        Note: Five years after the adoption of the word, I have come to know that, despite it having been produced spontaneously by the girl, indriso exists as an Anglo-Saxon surname too. I do not think that this new "linguistic surprise" should force us to rule out this word, but I think that this fact must be pointed out.

3.  THE UNCHANGEABLE AND THE CHANGEABLE

        As it was pointed out by the basic description, the indriso can be considered as a figure that contains in its nature the faculty to integrate the unchangeable (non changeable arrangement of the stanzas) and the changeable (variations in the quantity of syllables and distribution of rhyme).  To illustrate this fact I can say, for example, that in a corpus of 796 verses it was possible to find at least 40 variations in the layout of the rhyme.  Concerning the syllabic quantity, I worked by means of testing with a range of verses from two to eighteen syllables. I think that this is possible because of the association of the verses in a relation of 3 to 1. An object organized with this type of numerical relation among its parts (Trinitarian structure) permits the extension of a great diversity of forms while maintaining, even if it seems paradoxical, its idiosyncrasy.
        There are eight possibilities of rhyme distribution in a terzain:  AAA, AAB, ABB, BBA, ABA, BAB, ABC, and also in a one-line stanza of the indriso: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. In a combination of these two types of stanzas, the perspectives of arrangement reach a difficult number to be calculated.  The figure 40 does not exhaust the number of combinations and, today, while I continue writing these poems, I continue finding more. 


4. THE INDRISO AND THE SYMBOLS

        We recall now how the poem has arisen: as an image formed in the mind.  We are not facing the result of a voluntary, logical and rational operation; rather we are before the movement of an old known (and unknown) assistant: the subconscious.  And if we speak about the subconscious we will be able to refer to its natural language, that is the symbol, the archetypical image.
        The indriso is, in symbolic terms, a duplicated trinity: a cosmic rhythmic pattern, a form of organization of things under which the existence has been ordered from the very moment it exists, and the human being has also grasped and interpreted since his existence. The trinity implies an "alchemical synthesis" between the single (symbolized by number 1) and the multiple (symbolized by number 3).  We are before a total image of the universe that shows us a movement in two directions: 
        1st. The diastole movement, or the spread of things from a unit or center to an end point of diversity and expansion (as in the idea of the Big Bang).
        2nd. The systole movement, or the re-absorption of all things to their point of origin (a fact that would coincide with the pattern of the indriso: "going from three to one").
        Then, what is the sense in duplicating the stanzas? For this I remember the interpretation that the anthropologists Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant offer in their Dictionary of symbols. It defines the duplication of an object as the capacity to show itself in its maximum expression.  We would be before something like showing the two faces of the same coin. 
        In a specific moment, there comes an indriso that will allow us to understand these ideas, not through the argument, but through the image.  For the sake of the truth, we must assume that when we enter this kind of speech, being strayed in metaphysical speculation without a real base is easier than it is desirable, but the poem below provided me the necessary security to affirm that, in fact, we can consider the indriso as an archetypical image. That is: 

        
        Where do we want to go with all this?  Well, on one hand, we want to know the poem from all its possible angles (it can be observed that there is a clear correlation between the simple metric form and the symbolic dimension); on the other hand, we want to get to the question of its possible capacity of suggestion.
        A probable objection to these ideas would be the following question:  How is it possible to assemble such a framework of arguments if, in the end, it is a poem that comes from the sonnet?  The answer is given in the simple fact that the sonnet is also susceptible to being interpreted in symbolic and metaphysical terms, as has been happening since its origin. The poets from before the Renaissance had already used pithagoric notions to investigate it; they had spoken about its numbers, its geometry, using terms like "circle quadrature", "golden proportion", etc. 
        At the level of the symbol, the sonnet is the result of a combination of the numbers 4 and 3.  The number 4 is a numerical representation of the dense matter, the earth, the stability (the formal correlation of this image is observed through the scarce mobility of the rhymes that, until now, have not frequently moved away from the combinations ABBA and ABAB). The number 3 represents the multiple, the subtle world, the dynamism (formal correlation: the high degree of rhyme varieties). The sum of 4 and 3 is 7, the sacred number of excellence, the number that expresses the harmonized universe, which is commonly called "the marriage of earth and sky".
        In short, I think that if the indriso should have the capacity to suggest positively, one of the main causes will be found in its archetypical nature, in the fact that it is born and participates in what we know in modern terms as "collective unconscious". 

5.  THOSE TWO VERSES…

        Another matter that will bring some difficulties is to decide how we should name those last two verses of the indriso.  What are they, verses or stanzas?  Throughout the study process I have asked the opinion of several literature experts, who gave me the following opinions.
        In a first group there are those who affirm that they should be defined as "verses".  Some of them proposed the expression "verso suelto” (“loose verse”), without paying attention to the fact that the term is already used in the Spanish manuals to designate a verse that, when inserted in a rhymed stanza, lacks rhyme. 
        The word "maxim" is another option.  It refers to a synthetic and brief statement that does not have any relation to the others. Certainly, it is not difficult to accept this second term because, in the indriso, the tone of speech tends to adopt a sententious appearance, as the voice condenses in the two statements separated by blank spaces. But we can object to the defenders of "maxim" by saying that the word does not resolve the question yet because those verses are integrated in a strophic group and, therefore, they should be something more than only verses. However, according to traditional definition, "stanza" implies the existence of more than one contiguous verse... 
        In a second group there are the detractors of "verse" and similar expressions, affirming that it is coherent to speak about "stanza" because the two lines are separated and/or related between themselves and the terzains by interstrophic pauses, all of it constituting an organic whole. 
        However, the proposal that until today seems more adequate to me appears in the work of the grammarian Tomás Navarro y Tomás, and it is the expression "one-line stanzas". Understanding the defenders of both confronted opinions is relatively easy. In principle, when we observe those two lines and we think in isolation of the word "verse" we realize that the problem has not been resolved, this definition is insufficient. When we think of the word "stanza" alone it is also insufficient. The Navarro y Tomás proposal allows us to understand that perhaps the best thing would be to not exclude one term or another, but to integrate them in the same expression. It reminds us once again about the idea of the synthesis of opposites: they are stanzas (multiplicity) and they are also verses (individuality), that is, one-line stanzas. 

6.  DERIVATIONS OF THE INDRISO
(May, 2008)

        Up until here we have spoken about the form 3-3-1-1, but now, after seven years of the poem’s existence, the Uruguayan author Teresa Marzialetti has explored all the other distribution possibilities between the duplicated terzains and one-line stanzas. Her findings reveal, in principle, five derivations from the first indriso.  We have, therefore, a total of six forms. These can be organized into three opposite pairs. I demonstrate them now and propose a nomenclature for their distinction: 

        
        3-3-1-1:  Indriso or indriso in systole. 
        1-1-3-3:  Indriso in diastole. 
        3-1-3-1:  Indriso of two systoles. 
        1-3-1-3:  Indriso of two diastoles. 
        3-1-1-3:  Indriso in internal systole. 
        1-3-3-1:  Indriso in internal diastole. 

        Just as I indicated in the epigraph nº 4 of this article, The indriso and the symbols, I understand the transition of 3 toward 1 as a contraction movement (systole) and the transition of 1 toward 3 as an expansion movement (diastole).  As for the relation among the variants, I believe it is possible to interpret the 3-3-1-1 structure as a primary form from which the others are projected: being the first form of the indriso originated from the sonnet, it has permitted later manifestation of the other forms. If we want to capture them graphically: