Tribute From Dana Dragunoiu
David Rampton was a very special human being. I first met him through his scholarship on Nabokov. His books on Nabokov—Vladimir Nabokov: A Critical Study of the Novels (1984), Vladimir Nabokov (1993), Vladimir Nabokov: A Literary Life (2012)—are foundational to Nabokov studies and for good reason. (His essays in scholarly journals and essay collections are too many to list here.) David’s analyses of Nabokov achieved the very rare feat of being attuned to its glories and virtues without glossing over its blind spots. Insightful and perceptive, his scholarship was critical in the best sense of what literary criticism ought to be. He stands together with other Nabokov scholars of his generation whose analyses have stood the test of time because they believed that Nabokov’s work is great enough to deserve more than mere praise and adulation.
The news of David’s death feels devastating not because of his scholarship. His scholarship will live on; his work on Nabokov will continue to be quoted as frequently as it is today. The sense of devastation comes from the loss of David as a person. There was a serene beneficence in David’s inner-most being that suffused everything he did. I suspect that this glow has something in common with the zhizneradostnost’ that Véra Nabokov ascribed to her husband in her Foreword to Nabokov’s Stikhi. David exhibited a “joyfulness-in-life” that the Russian word captures so well. His greatest joy came from his love for his family: his wife, Elizabeth, and their four children, Vanessa, Nicholas, Adrian, and Alexis. Later, it also encompassed his three grand-daughters, Anouk, Nour, and Maya, in whose presence he and Elizabeth found endless delight.
David’s life-joyfulness was so abundant that it spilled over into the rest of his life. He was not one to gossip; he was not one to find fault with others. It was hard being anything other than one’s best self in his presence. Given that we taught at sister universities in Ottawa, we shared many students and colleagues. He was beloved by both groups. The news of his death travelled like an electrical shock through the student-colleague-alumni-emeriti wires that connected us. The love and admiration he inspired, and the brightness at the very heart of his personality, make it somehow apt that he is no longer with us at a time when the world has become so sickeningly dark.
But David’s life was an antidote to darkness, so I wish to end with a series of happy, luminous memories. David was a very gifted runner, but he discreetly adjusted his pace to that of his slower companions. (He didn’t mind doing so: as he confessed to me, his most enjoyable runs had been with his eldest daughter when she was pregnant.) He ran especially slowly when we ran together in Parnell before the start of sessions at the “Nabokov Upside Down” Conference in New Zealand, in Jardin des Plantes at the “Nabokov and France” Conference in Paris, and on the seafront promenade in Biarritz at the “Do the Senses Make Sense?” Conference. We planned these runs early, so that their destination would be Elizabeth and breakfast. As we plumped down next to her after each run, the three of us would laugh at the fact that we seemed to need a faraway conference to spend time together. As we grew older, we did make time to see each other in good, old Ottawa, and we spent many happy hours together either in their home or mine. David’s illness, however cruel and formidable, did not succeed in altering his sweet, sunny personality. Four months before he died, he still recounted with relish his and Elizabeth’s granddaughters’ habits and accomplishments, wanted to know details about our shared Nabokov world, and reminded me of some things I had forgotten about during those marvellous conferences in Auckland, Paris, and Biarritz.
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Tribute from Paul Grant
I’m very saddened by the news of David Rampton’s death. The Nabokov community has lost one of its most engaging voices, and a kind, encouraging friend. I first read David’s work on Nabokov during my undergraduate years and it immediately appealed to me: scholarly yet free of stuffiness, it was a model of the kind of criticism that I enjoy. We first corresponded after my move to Canada, when I applied for a position at the University of Ottawa. I didn’t get the job, but David went out of his way to write me a personal reply. This personal touch was typical: in the years that followed, he provided an endorsement for one of my projects on Nabokov and a letter of reference for my application for tenure. In the latter case, I emailed to thank him on Christmas Eve, and he wrote back the same evening, thanking me, in turn, for providing him with an excuse to escape festive cooking duties. His humour was in evidence again when we finally met in person at the Nabokov conference in New Zealand in 2012, which he attended with his wife, Elizabeth. I saw him once more in Paris a year later: he had playfully suggested a picnic at the Jardin du Luxembourg, but we weren’t able to follow through. Our last email exchange was in June 2023, when I expressed regret that he wouldn’t be able to attend the Nabokov conference in Switzerland. As always, I reminded him of how much I admired his writing. David will be missed, but he has left behind an important body of work from which we all benefit. My deepest condolences to Elizabeth and all of the family.