Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!

Pound’s couplet pits “mendacities” (deliberate untruths) against “the classics in paraphrase,” implying that a vivid, even invented rendering can be preferable to a flattened, second-hand retelling of great literature. The jab aligns with Pound’s modernist insistence on precision, energy, and direct contact with the original text—especially in translation and adaptation—rather than dutiful summary. It also reflects his polemical habit of valuing artistic intensity over respectable correctness: a work that risks distortion but preserves force, cadence, and image may, for Pound, be truer in effect than a paraphrase that loses the classic’s formal and imaginative power.