Myth of the Sun Thief
In the beginning Earth was in darkness. Earth’s creatures moved blindly over frozen ground. But Raven knew of a riverbank on which there was a cabin whose windows glowed radiantly. When at last he found the cabin, he snuck in through a smokehole in its log roof and saw that inside there lived a family who possessed two simple birchwood boxes and in each box were objects of great light. Where they came from and how the family came by them, Raven did not know. All Raven knew was that he needed to see the light.
Raven, clever as ever, quickly made a plan, hopped unseen from the smokehole, and transformed into a mote of dust. Then, he dropped into the family’s water-basin and waited. When the daughter of the house drank from the basin, Raven slipped inside her throat. When she became pregnant with Raven, her grandfather called it a miracle. The Earth’s long night passed on and there was no measure of time but Raven, growing in the womb.
When Raven was born, he looked just like a human child. The child-that-was-Raven still craved the light. Whenever he made his way to the first box, he sobbed and howled as they carried him back to the fireside. The girl’s grandfather, who was delighted to see the child laugh, couldn’t bear to see him cry, so one day gave the box to the child-that-was-Raven.
As soon as the grandfather placed the box on the child’s lap, Raven transformed into himself again. His trick complete, he clutched both boxes greedily in his talons and flew out through the smokehole. As he flew, one came unlatched and swung open. Thousands of stars scattered against the sky, and a dim light shone. Then, the Moon spilled out, and the light grew brighter still. In pale illumination, the frozen expanse of the world was revealed: forests, mountains, rivers, and valleys.
Raven looked out in distracted wonder. As he did, the second box loosened in his grasp. From it, the Sun fell and caught in the trees below. At once, Earth’s first sunrise streamed down from dark trees. And all the People and creatures of the Earth saw their long-night trails winding behind them and beheld the living Land before them. Their eyes could not believe themselves. They had no words for it.
Language would come later to attempt to describe what was seen in that first look. For now, Raven flew back and picked the Sun out from the branches. He still desired to see more. He took it in his beak and bore it high and higher still while it scorched his feathers. As he flew, the sun-thief laughed to see the shining world spread below him.
“How do I explain this?” Raven said.
It was the Earth’s first question.
Elias Christian, editor of Sun Thief Press, was born and raised in rural Alaska and has heard variations of the Raven Steals the Sun myth since childhood. It is a widespread and ancient oral story told throughout the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Alaska, along the Salmon Coast of Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the American continent.
The myth, retold here with some creative license, speaks to our founding vision for Sun Thief Press as a home for translators and writers in uncertain times. For us, the story represents the responsibility of the writer as both witness and mediator, observer and agent. It is about the difficulty of articulation, of reflecting the Real into the representation of text.
The responsibility incumbent upon us as writers and translators is embodied by the agency of Raven as a trickster, a shapeshifter, but ultimately as a light-bringer. Raven doesn’t create the world so much as illuminate and give it meaning. Raven is the actor and the translator, and through this dual role symbolizes a coming-to-know, a movement toward the epistemological horizon. Raven rides the lines of sight, and all along them obscures and distorts our vision. The mystery is retained, but we are left with a little light to see by. As light grows, shadows complexify. This is what translation, and the act of writing, means to us.
Sun Thief Press honors its namesake by publishing translated works of poetry and short fiction that reflect the urgency of illumination and distortion in our contemporary world. We hope to publish bold new work that challenges the limits of translation as a literary form. If it’s been translated before, it is important to us that the work reveals something new in the text and brings fresh light by which to see and understand it.