Soul and skill …

… On Black Lamb and Grey Falcon | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

What she confronted over and over again in her travels through the South Slavic world was how entangled history is, how incessantly events link to other events, the chain disappearing into the mists of time. West wrote as Europe was falling into ruins once more, and came to see quite clearly just how many of the catastrophic events of her own time stemmed from the Battle of the Field of Blackbirds on the Plain of Kosovo in 1389 — but how could that be explained to a modern person, occupied by the present-mindedness endemic to our world?