The article discusses a two-volume edition of 'Szkice' (Sketches) by a forgotten prose writer of the latter half of 19th century, who used the pseudonym 'Klin'. A thesis is proposed that these texts may be associated with a modern essayistic discourse, to be justified by analysing the texts' poetics - in particular, the way the author's 'I' is shaped. Description of its kinship, but not identity, with the figures of decadent and dandy enables to reconstruct a sceptical-critical cognitive project comprised in the text, a specific anthropology and - finally - an ingenious creation of the subject.