THE SALVATION OF THE WEST THROUGH A CIVILIZATIONAL ENACTMENT OF NECROMANCY, KATABASIS, AND CANON FORMATION A PROPOSAL. The West is, among other things, a single conversation beginning with Homer and stretching over three thousand years of reply, response, argumentation, etc. The backbone here is epic poetry: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton and their modern rejoinders and completions: Wagner's Ring, which brings in fresh material from Northern sources and Pound, who composes an encyclopedic epitaph for the West in his magnificent Cantos. Eliot can be read as commentary on Pound. In fact, each of these works is not only a reply to the previous work, but continues themes and even characters. The relationship of Odin and Brunnhilde in Wagner comes directly from Zeus and Athena. Virgil responds to Homer by making the Romans the descendents of the vanquished Trojans. Dante is given the tour of Hell by Virgil himself, his poetic master. Present in all of these works is what Pound calle