This essay is the first scholarly critique of one of Celan’s posthumously published ‘fictional’prose texts (fragment number 122 from Mikrolithen sind’s, Steinchen). It examines the textusing the structural and philosophical notions of fragment and individuality as framework.Both of these terms prove fruitful for the re-problematisation of certain key concepts inCelan’s poetics and shed new light on the relation between (auto-) biography and text, andbetween the lyric self and the lyric other. By contextualising fragment number 122 withinCelan’s oeuvre, this essay traces the central importance of Max Scheler’s Die Stellung desMenschen im Kosmosfor Celan. Largely overlooked in Celan Scholarship, Scheler’s philo-sophy influenced Celan’s poetics from the early 1950s to his famous Meridianspeech (1960).