Demigorge

"THE DEMIGORGES¹ OF A BASTION² are formed by producing the adjoining curtains³, until they meet the capital of the bastion.⁴
. . .
"It has two faces, two demigorges, and two extremities."⁵

- Sir Charles William Pasley, Lieut.-Colonel Royal Engineers, F.R.S.
Course of Military Instruction, Volume II: Containing Elementary Fortification

"In the first he makes the demi-gorge equal to 24 toises⁶ in the square, 25 in the pentagon, 26 in the hexagon, 27 in the heptagon, 28 in the octagon, 29 in the enneagon, and 30 in the decagon, and all higher polygons.⁷
. . . 
"His flanks are on right lines, drawn from the center of the figure through the extremities of the demi-gorges.⁸
. . . 
"...120 toises, from the center of the figure to the middle of which he suppose a perpendicular to be drawn, and to be divided into n+1 parts (n being the number of the sides), two of which he allows for each of the demi-gorges, and three for each of the capitals⁹, from the outer extremities of which last, rasant¹⁰ lines of defence, drawn to the extremities of the demi-gorges or curtain, determine the lengths of the flanks, which are on right lines, drawn from the center of the figure, and the positions and lengths of the faces of the bastions."¹¹

-Charles James, An Universal Military Dictionary

"COMPLEMENT of the Courtin [in Fortification] is that part of the Courtin, which (being wanting) is the Demi-gorge, or the Remainder of the Courtin, after its Flank is taken away, to the Angle of the Demi-gorge."¹²

-Nathan Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary

 

1. Etymologically, DEMIGORGE would seem to derive from demi-, half, and gorge, throat: a blocked windpipe, the inability to swallow. Or, perhaps, a reminder that our appetites are not entirely essential. It follows a string of false cognates beginning from Demiurge (δημιουργός, craftsman, the creator of our debased world) to Demogorgon (a deity invented wholesale by Lactantius in third century AD, Dicit deum Demogorgona summum) to Demogorge (the God-Eater, a deity invented by Alan Zelenetz and Bob Hall for Marvel Comics in 1982). The deities share no etymology or genealogy but the similarity of their names, words picked for what they sound like, stripped of any definite meaning and inviting supposition. All variants of DEMIURGE are gods or demons that rule the world, born of word association. 

2. Demigorges are military deities, the genii loci of bastions. A bastion is a pentagrammic projection from a fortress, a promontory into a hostile sea. Despite this, a bastion is also held as a place of safekeeping and preservation. By the rules of the demigorges, the only way to defend something (our nation, our freedom, our way of life) is to assert it outwards offensively.
 
3. Demigorges are completely artificial, twice-constructed, "formed by producing". A curtain veils and reveals, serves as an element of theater. Demigorges are formed through an artificial revelation, the curtains parting to reveal what has deliberately been kept hidden.

4. Even a bastion, as an extension of a fortress, forms its own politics and political capital. Every forward thrust collects its own power, finds its own center. Pioneers build colonies, explorers found nations. A nation expands from the point of a blade.

5. Demigorges are anatomical, part of some larger organism, functioning according to bilateral symmetry. Man creates the world in his image. Demigorges are what remain between a face and an extremity, between what sees and consumes and what extends outwards.

6. A toise is a unit of measurement for length, area, and volume simultaneously. It is either exactly 6 feet, or exactly 2 meters, or 1.8 meters, or about 3.799 square meters, or 8 cubic meters altogether. Within a toise, all conceptions of distance and space fold into one another. To mark out a border is to enclose a territory, to claim a territory necessitates inhabiting it in three dimensions. Maps make fortresses, make nations.

7. As a demigorge is composed of multiple toises, it is simultaneously one-, two-, and three-dimensional, existing within all planes of order and expanding to fill the space it is allotted. It inhabits the space of higher polygons. It inhabits the space of a straight line.

8. A demigorge is pierced through its flanks, through its still-beating heart, crucified upon a divine geometry. Crucifixion splays the condemned out on display as a deterrence to other potential offenders. A demigorge, up to its extremities, is a display of the potentiality of its violence enacted upon itself. 

9. The figure is drawn, divided, sliced into parts, the capitals being accorded a larger portion of the share than the demigorges. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. 

10. Rasant: archaic, meaning long, sweeping, curving, arcing off into the distance, such that a shot fired will fall off and merely graze the target. Such a term presumes that an army's strength weakens at its extremities, that there are no weapons of war that can inflict destruction from miles away. The arc is of history, the last line of defense a wavering, dying line tracing back to a past where there was a limit to our abilities to destroy.

11. Any attempt to define a demigorge necessarily degenerates into archaic jargon and obscurantism, the words themselves imbued with a quasi-mystic power due to their mystery: the essence of the occult. Meaning is obliterated; we are left with fleeting bits of familiar-sounding phrases, word association, trying to piece together an equation we no longer understand.The demigorges stretch from the outer extremities, the last lines of defense. They determine the positions and lengths and faces, our bastion walls stare out of us. The demigorges are artificial, we have constructed them in their entirety (As we constructed squares and pentagons and enneagons? Or was that always merely our uncovering of a higher geometrical reality?). What have we created for ourselves?
 
12. A demigorge can be understood as an absence, an incompleteness, an amputation. It is a mathematical remainder. It is that which is wanting. A curtain is a court is an enclosure, is a theater of laws and security and fortification and all the promises of nation. A curtain encloses a space for playacting, the representation of something that otherwise doesn't exist. The curtains part and a barren stage is revealed, dancers with their legs amputated. Bastions project outwards into hostile territory, but the nation itself is hollow, reduced to nothing but border, nothing left behind it. Its Flank is taken away, to the Angle of the Demi-gorge.