Evola's Mother

THERE is an interesting story involving Julius Evola's seventy-eight year-old mother, Concetta Mangiapane, who actively conspired to help her son deceive the Allied secret service whenever its agents made an unexpected visit to their home on the top floor of Corso Vittorio Emanuele 197, Rome. As the philosopher later explained in the pages of Il Popolo italiana in March 1957:

“With a rare presence of spirit, my old mother knew how to restrain them. When she let them in by way of the same door I exited without them being aware of it at all.”

Although one has visions of Signora Mangiapane as 1944's equivalent of Hecate, goddess of the household, the only thing missing from this little tale is a plate of Garibaldi biscuits and a refreshing cup of arsenic tea.