To Peach or Not to Peach

In his lyric persuasiveness over Hades and Per-sephone, Orpheus—Pindar’s “father of song”—sug-gests an especially lovely instance of what Kathleen Biddick invokes as “master signifier.” The story of Orpheus likewise describes the break of La-canian ligature. As dyad, Orpheus and Eurydice are most heart-breaking, not in their inseparabil-ity but in that inseparability’s irrevocable turn (another form of Biddick’s “swerve”) to irrepara-ble singleness, the fact of bereft linkage. And as though this pathos of singularity were not enough, the Maenads rip Orpheus to pieces.