After the maid's call, the circle by the fire, of course, loses its fraternal character. Peter would like to slip away unnoticed, but the crowd crowds behind him. He stays too close to the center, and the maid will easily follow him with her eyes as he walks towards the gate. He hesitates again, he waits for the continuation of events. This is not the behavior of a person who is gripped by fear. Peter moves away from the light and warmth, because he vaguely guesses why the servant girl is angry, but still he does not leave. That is why she can repeat the accusation. She does not want to intimidate Peter, but to embarrass him in order to force him to get away.

Seeing that Peter is not leaving, the maidservant persists and utters her accusation a second time, stating that Peter belonged to a group of disciples: "This is one of them!" It was them she wanted to mobilize against the alien. This time she addresses them directly and achieves the desired result; the whole group, in unison, repeats, addressing Peter: "You are one of them!" In the ensuing conversation, it is Peter who first raises his tone; It was he who "began to swear and swear"—but if he had feared for his life, or even for his freedom, he would have spoken with less force.

The superiority of Mark's version is that he gives the floor to the same maid twice in a row, and does not pass the word to other characters. His maid is drawn more vividly. She takes the lead, she excites the whole group. Today we would say that she has leadership qualities. But, as always, one should not fall into psychologism: Mark is not interested in the personality of the servant, but in how she activates group dynamics, in how she uses collective mimeticism.

Already at her first intervention, she, as I said, tried to wake up the group, which was probably dazed from the late hour, from the warmth of the fire. She wants others to follow her example, and when she doesn't, she's the first to follow her own example. Her lesson has not been learned, so she gives a second one, which consists in repeating the first. Leaders know that supporters need to be treated like children; Imitation must be constantly encouraged. The second example reinforces the action of the first, and this time the result is achieved, all those present join in unison: "As if you are one of them; and besides, you are a Galilean" (Mk 14:70*).

Mimeticism is characteristic not only of Mark's story; the scene of renunciation is entirely mimetic in all four Gospels, but in Mark the mimetic springs are better revealed from the very beginning, in the role of fire and in the role of the servant. Mark is the only one of all the evangelists who makes the servant girl go twice to start the mimetic machine. It presents itself as a model, and in order to make this model more effective, it is the first to imitate it, it emphasizes its role as a model, it mimetically clarifies what it expects from its comrades.

Students repeat what the teacher tells them. The words of the handmaiden are repeated, but with one addition, which perfectly illustrates what is meant in the scene of renunciation: "And besides, you are a Galilean." At first illuminated by fire, recognized by his face, now Peter is also recognized by his tongue. Matthew dots the i's (as he often does) when he makes Peter's persecutors say: "Your speech convicts you" (Mt 26:73). All those who warm themselves by the fire with a clear conscience are residents of Jerusalem. They're all from here. Peter spoke only twice, and both times only a few words, but this is enough for his interlocutors to unmistakably recognize in him a man "not from here," always a little despised provincial, a Galilean. The one who has an accent, any accent, is always the one who is not from here. Language is the most reliable indicator of "being-s". That is why Heidegger and the schools close to him attach such importance to the linguistic dimension of being. The specificity of a national language or even a dialect is fundamental. We are constantly told that the most essential thing in a text or even in a language, everything that makes it valuable, is untranslatable. And so the Gospels cannot be considered essential, since they are written in a degenerate Greek language, cosmopolitan and devoid of literary prestige. And the main thing is that they are excellently translated, and when we read them, we quickly forget in what language we read them, if only we knew it—in the Greek original, in the Latin translation of Jerome, in French, in German, in Italian, in Spanish, and so on. If we are familiar with the Gospels, translating them into a language we do not know is the best way to penetrate the heart of that language at the lowest cost. The Gospels are all things to all; They don't have an accent as they have all the accents. Peter is an adult, and his way of speaking is established once and for all. He cannot change anything in it. It cannot accurately imitate the capital's accent. To have the desired "being" is not only to always say what everyone else says, but to say it in the same way. The slightest shade of intonation can give you away. Language is either a traitorous servant or a servant who is too faithful, which constantly announces the true identity of anyone who tries to hide this identity.

A mimetic rivalry begins between Peter and his interlocutors, in which the stake is "being-s", dancing in the flames of the fire. Peter is furiously trying to "integrate," that is, to demonstrate the high quality of his imitation, but his antagonists inexorably turn to the most unimitable aspects of cultural mimeticism, such as language rooted in the unconscious areas of the psyche.

The more deeply rooted the belonging, the more "authentic" it is, the more ineradicable it is, the more it is based on idioms that seem deep but are perhaps very insignificant, real idioties, both in the French [and Russian] sense of the word, and in the Greek sense, where idion means "one's own." The more a thing belongs to us as our property, the more we actually belong to it; But this does not mean that such a thing is in some special way "inexhaustible". Sexuality is one of these things, along with language. John tells us that the maidservant was young, and perhaps this is not an accidental detail.

We are all obsessed with language and sex. This is undoubtedly true. But why should we always talk about this in the tone of the obsessed? Perhaps there are better options. Peter now sees that he has failed to deceive the people in the courtyard, and he continues to deny his teacher, no longer in order to convince them, but in order to sever the ties by which he was bound to Jesus, and at the same time to make new ties with those around him: "But he began to swear and to swear, I do not know this man of whom you speak" (Mark 14:11). 71).

We are talking about a truly religious relationship (from the Latin religare - "to bind"). And so Peter resorts to oaths, just as Herod did in his overly generous offer to Salome. Strong expressions and angry gestures are addressed not to Peter's interlocutors, but to Jesus himself. Peter makes Jesus his sacrifice in order to stop being a kind of small sacrifice himself, as first the handmaiden makes of him, then the whole group. What these people do to Peter, Peter would like to do to them in return, but he cannot. He is not strong enough to triumph over them through revenge. Therefore, he tries to reconcile with his enemies by making an alliance with them against Jesus, treating Jesus to please them and in front of them, just as they themselves treat him. In the eyes of these faithful servants, Jesus must necessarily be a villain, since it was decided to arrest him, because he was being brutally interrogated. And the best way to make friends in an unfriendly world is to join in their enmity, to learn from others their enemies. In such cases, we always say the same thing to these others: "We are all from the same clan, we form the same group, because we have the same scapegoat."

At the heart of Peter's denial, of course, is fear, but, above all, shame. Like impudence (which Peter had shown a little earlier), shame is a mimetic feeling, one might say the main mimetic feeling. To experience it, I must look at myself through the eyes of someone in front of whom I am ashamed. That is, you need to imagine intensively, and this is the same as slavishly imitating. To imagine, to imitate—these two terms are actually the same. Peter is ashamed of Jesus, whom everyone despises, ashamed of the model he has chosen for himself, and therefore ashamed of himself.

The desire to be accepted is inflamed by the obstacles that arise in front of him. Therefore, Peter is ready to pay very dearly for the admission that the maid and her friends refuse him, but the intensity of his desire, aroused by the intensity of situational interaction, belongs entirely to this place and time. This is nothing more than one of those petty baseness that everyone commits and that no one remembers after they have committed it. We shouldn't be amazed that Peter betrayed his teacher like that, so lowly, we all do the same thing. What is striking is that of the structure, persecutory and sacrificial, which we find in its entirety in the scene of the renunciation, and which is rewritten in its entirety, as accurately as in the murder of John the Baptist or in the story of the Passion.

It is in the light of this structural identity between all three episodes that I think some of Matthew's words should be interpreted; And their legal meaning can be considered nothing more than an external shell. What Jesus is telling people is the structural equivalent of all persecutory behaviors: