of La Juventud. La Juventud denounced the teaching of Fernando Velarde, a Spaniard who lived in the country during the 1870s, influencing young writers with his dreamy and grandiloquent poetry. His teaching produced poetic work influenced by Spanish romanticism. Among these authors were Juan José Cañas (1826–1918) (lyricist of the national anthem), Rafael Cabrera, Dolores Arias, Antonio Guevara Valdés, and Isaac Ruiz Araujo. While still teenagers, Rubén Darío (1867–1916)—the famous Nicaraguan poet who then lived in San Salvador— and Francisco Gavidia (1864–1955) attacked Velarde's poetry and drew attention instead to the model of Parnassian symbolist poetry from France. Both studied this poetry with rigor and enthusiasm, trying to unravel its intricate constructive mechanisms and translating them into the Spanish language. Francisco Gavidia took on the founding of a national literature, a preoccupation that is seen throughout his voluminous writings. His writings are the greatest expression of the liberal spirit in the arts. His vision of the Salvadoran literature advocates for the dominance of Western traditions, while not forgetting the need to preserve and to know native traditions. Other important authors of the period included Vicente Acosta, Juan José Bernal, Calixto Velado, and Víctor Jerez. Some of them participated in the publication The Literary Fortnight, which played an important role in disseminating the turn-of-the-century aesthetic. 20th-century literature During the first decades of the 20th century modernismo continued to dominate Salvadorean literature, though new trends began to be seen. The model of liberal cultural modernization appeared to be consolidated under the short-lived government of Manuel Enrique Araujo, who enjoyed support among intellectuals and seemed committed to a policy encouraging science and the arts. Araujo tried to give a stronger institutional base to the model of scientific literary societies with the founding of the Ateneo de El Salvador (association for the study of national history and writing), but this impulse was cut short by his assassination in 1913. During the Meléndez-Quiñones dynasty that followed, any progress was overshadowed by the return of evils of past times: nepotism, intolerance and clientelism, especially within the intellectual class. Costumbrismo and introspection The Salvadoran literary scene, which had previously embodied a cosmopolitan aesthetic spirit, was poorly equipped to deal with the country's new political reality. As a result, different manners of portraying local customs and everyday life arose, whether satirical or analytic, and writers began to turn their attention to matters previously neglected in literary expression. One