Here is the English translation, faithful to the meaning and structure of the original text, with a clear, scholarly tone:

Brancusi was a charming and sociable man; he possessed a particularly complex personality, known to only a small number of people and understood by very few. He was open to any subject, whether related to the arts, sciences, or philosophy. His friends respected and admired him for his qualities. He sang, he cooked, and he devised various objects like no one else, for he was highly inventive.

In his youth, he was known in bohemian circles as a great lover of festivities. He enjoyed cigarettes, good wine, and the company of beautiful, educated, and intelligent women. He never married, although he had many relationships as well as a child, whom he did not acknowledge and refused to see.

Brancusi was a blend of sins and virtues in constant struggle! He was well aware of his sins and fought them relentlessly until a very advanced age. For this reason, it was considered interesting to penetrate the inner world of the man and the artist Brancusi in an unconventional manner: through the women he had known. Some were his models—the Baroness Renée Frachon, Margit Pogany, Léonie Ricou, Marie Bonaparte, Agnes E. Meyer, Eilane Lane, Nancy Cunard; others were his friends, and still others were those he loved. He valued beauty and intelligence and never accepted at his side a woman lacking a sharp mind, as his severity in distancing them from himself and from his studio was well known. He was adored by Parisian aristocracy and could often be encountered in fashionable salons.

In the United States, a legend had grown around him, which is why women of high society sought him out and cultivated his acquaintance as soon as they arrived in Paris.

During his lifetime, he did not wish to marry, for he feared losing his freedom of action and creation, or having to disrupt the order he had imposed upon himself. In 1920, during the scandal surrounding Princess X, he told journalist Roger Devigne that woman was merely “a smile on rags, with paint on the cheeks. But that is not woman” [340]. Brancusi loved women and maintained complete discretion regarding his intimate relationships. In contemplating woman, he always sought what cannot be seen with one’s own eyes; above all, he sought woman herself.

Among all those who wrote about Brancusi, only Modigliani—his close friend who revered him—truly radiographed him and observed that he was an accumulation of contradictions, which did not make him easy to understand: “a block of stone,” yet “cunning as a fox,” with “the warm heart of a peasant,” but “detached like a scholar”; at times “gluttonous,” then “fasting for days and starving,” he was “a saint,” yet his eyes sparkled at the sight of beautiful women [341].

Two writers who knew the artist well commented on Brancusi’s romantic relationships. Adrian Maniu believed that, for the artist, “love and joy were the means of invigorating the world” [342], and Henri-Pierre Roché knew that he “appreciated beautiful women.” The feeling was mutual. The artist treated women with “respect, gallantry, kindness, indulgence”; in essence, “with his curling beard, he was a seducer” [343].

References:

[340] R. Devigne, The Man Who Planes Women, L’Ère nouvelle, Paris, 28 January 1920, p. 6.
Brancusi: “Indeed, what exactly is a woman? A smile on rags, with paint on her cheeks. But that is not woman.”

[341] P. Neagoe, The Saint of Montparnasse (Sfântul din Montparnasse), Dacia Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca, 1977, pp. 149–150.
Amedeo Modigliani on Brancusi:
“[…] you resemble a block of stone. […] You are as cunning as a fox, but I cannot paint you as a fox, because you have the warm heart of a peasant, yet also a cold corner within—you are detached like a scholar. You are a glutton and a remarkable cook, but how can I paint you as such when I also see you fasting for days on end, starving yourself in order to attain the illumination of saints? And then how can I paint you as a saint when I see your eyes sparkle at the sight of beautiful women.”

[342] A. Maniu, Brancusi, Dimineața, Bucharest, 12 October 1930.

[343] H.-P. Roché, op. cit., pp. 12–17.

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