Louis Ratisbonne’s “La Chanson du Coquillage” in “Le Bateau ivre.” Echoes and whispers

This article deals with the possible links between Arthur Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau ivre” and “La Chanson du Coquillage,” a poem by Louis Ratisbonne, a children’s poet from the late nineteenth century. It is hypothesized that Ratisbonne, evoked by Rimbaud in a parodic and scatological way in the Album zutique, may have inspired Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau ivre.” This comparison makes it possible, among other things, to question the status of childhood and the child in Rimbaud’s poem.