The resounding echoes of Carducci’s poetry in Catalan and Spanish literature, particularly during the early decades of the twentieth century, are illustrative of a wide range of casuistry employed when interpreting his work. This contribution analyses some examples which clearly reveal disparities or discord between text and paratext. The method adopted attempts to demonstrate how this discord can be particularly useful when identifying the key factors which influenced how Carducci’s work was received in Catalonia and Spain in the twentieth century. The cases investigated in this contribution concern adapting Carducci’s latin metre, shifting emphasis between civil commitment and contemplative hedonism or between monarchic and republican ideology, and the dichotomies classicism/romanticism and classicism/decadence. This discord found in Catalan and Spanish translations and their corresponding paratexts illustrates not only difficulties importing Carducci’s poetic model, but also major departures (conscious or unconscious) from certain postulates in Carducci’s poetry.