| Summary: | This essay reads Argentine poet Juan Gelman'ʹs 1994 bilingual Ladino-Castellano book Dibaxu in light of its intertextual relationship with Franco-Bosnian author Clarisse Nicoïdski'ʹs work, especially her 1986 bilingual Ladino-English poetry collection Lus ojus, las manus, la boca. I return to Gelman'ʹs text, written in a foreign, diasporic, and Jewish language in order to acknowledge Nicoïdski'ʹs work not only as a pre-text, but as a fundamental intertextual source forDibaxu. In doing so, I observe the different reasons these two poets have to use the Ladino language: while Nicoïdski seeks to establish a link with her Sephardic community, Gelman uses the language to escape the limited trappings of a national identity. Both, however, work towards the maintenance, or survival, of Ladino.
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