Reading classical poetry, Prešeren’s poetry in particular, seems to be something special, a fact already pointed out by Boža Krakar Vogel’s research. Such demanding texts can be made more comprehensible to a contemporary young reader by being modernised, commented on, turned into
prose and simplified. I carried out empirical research with first year classes at Tolmin high school. Students were asked to read the first twelve octaves of Krst (The Baptism) in three versions: poetry
only, prose only, and poetry and prose in parallel. The reading was immediately followed by a questionnaire including three reading comprehension tasks. It was clear that reading Krst pri Savici (The Baptism on the Savica) on one’s own was an extremely hard task for the average-motivated high school student, but understanding of referential meanings can be significantly improved if, while reading, studenys have a prose version of each stanza at their disposal.
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