The dreamer of Finnegans Wake (or, rather, his primary representative in the novel) goes by the initials HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker or Here Comes Everybody, the Everyman). His wife is called ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle), and she is his female aspect and his soul. She corresponds to what William Blake calls Jerusalem in his long poems (the emanation or female portion of Humanity/Albion, the sum total of all people’s emanations) and what Carl Jung calls the Anima (the female portion of each individual psyche).

These figures can also represent broad principles of the universe that have traditionally been gendered male and female. To oversimplify, the male principle signifies change or energy while the female principle gives shape to that energy and directs the change. In Finnegans Wake, ALP’s role is to pick up the pieces of the fallen HCE — like Isis gathering the body parts of the slain Osiris in Egyptian mythology — and pass them on to the next generation so that HCE can live again in the world of the children, where his twin sons eventually recombine into a new HCE (and his daughter matures into a new ALP) to start the cycle over again.

HCE can be compared to a cosmic egg (Humpty Dumpty), the singularity that burst open at the Big Bang, whom we are “consuming” through all of our experience. ALP is the force that transmutes that fallen energy into something positive, so that the eternal story of humanity can play out anew, with some differences, in each generation.

An early passage establishes ALP’s work as she sets out in the fallen, flooded world, whose landscape is the body of the fallen giant Finnegan/HCE:

Though the length of the land lies under liquidation (floote!) and there’s nare a hairbrow nor an eyebush on this glaubrous phace of Herrschuft Whatarwelter she’ll loan a vesta and hire some peat and sarch the shores her cockles to heat and she’ll do all a turfwoman can to piff the business on. Paff. To puff the blaziness on. Poffpoff. And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty times as awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our grand remonstrancers there’ll be iggs for the brekkers come to mournhim, sunny side up with care.

The idea that Finnegan/HCE’s death is a life-sustaining creation is echoed throughout the Wake. This notion is an echo of the dying god tradition, where the sacrifice and death of the god issues forth into crops that are then consumed to sustain life. This tradition might ultimately be where the rite of eucharist comes from (in the Catholic ritual that Joyce was familiar with, the priest intones while lifting the bread, “Hoc corpus est,” this is the body).

The phrase “iggs for the brekkers come to mournhim” is obviously supposed to sound like “eggs for breakfast come tomorrow morning.” The dreamer is subconsciously looking forward to the meal when he wakes. The fall (into unconsciousness) leads to breakfast. Allegorically, the dreamer yearning for breakfast stands for those of us in the dream of life looking forward to the New Jerusalem of heaven (or, in a more secular sense, it represents those of us who are lost in egotism/selfishness and pain and who are hoping for enlightenment and healing).

Since Finnegan/HCE’s great fall (in the form of cosmic egg bursting open) has resulted in the feast of existence we are living, there is a sense in which the New Jerusalem is here and now because the feast is here and now, in our experience of this life. As it says in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, the Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, but men do not see it.

The eggs are for the breakers, those who have broken him and then come to mourn him at his wake. This is like Christ dying for those who have in essence crucified him with their misdeeds. Curiously, “Brek” is the Czech word for “crying” but the Icelandic word for “practical jokes.” The mourners — who represent all of us — are crying at having broken the father, but they also participate in the cosmic joke of existence and the wonderful feast of life. I’m reminded of a description of the Buddha’s message: life is sorrow, but we can choose to live in joy.

On my second read through the text — and subsequent reflections on this passage — the word “iggs” caught my attention. It calls to mind ignorance (and the egotism of “I”), but it also makes me think of the Latin ignoscere, to forgive. So now I might gloss the last part of the sentence roughly as, “Finnegan’s fall produces an eternal reward for those who killed him, which is all of us, and though we mourn, we should also take joy, and we are forgiven our trespasses because we acted in ignorance.”

It’s the idea of the Fortunate Fall, Romans 11:32 as I discussed in the introductory blog post: we are allowed to sin so that we might have the greater good of forgiveness.

In this context, “sunny side up with care” isn’t just an egg reference. It’s the caring and sunny side of human nature that’s being celebrated here.

It reminds me that all energy on planet earth comes from the sun. Consuming food is literally absorbing solar energy. Night is an illusion — the sunnyness is always there; it’s just that sometimes we can’t see it.

And even though all the king’s horses and men can’t put HCE back together, ALP can. She’ll find the pieces to reassemble, like Isis with Osiris. She’ll do all she can to “piff the business on. Paff. To puff the blaziness on.”

The passing on of that blazing solar energy, that spark of inner light, from generation to generation is a major theme of Finnegans Wake. And it is only made possible by the cosmic principles called HCE and ALP, forces that are alive in the psyche of each of us.